


Dance with the Devil

by QuietContender



Series: Boston Romance [2]
Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autopsies, Crime Scenes, F/F, Investigations, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, POV Multiple, Serial Killers, Sexual Confusion, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:25:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1902399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietContender/pseuds/QuietContender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months into their new relationship, Jane and Maura are struggling to make the transition from friends to lovers. Maura's desire to go public brings things to a head for the detective who is much happier keeping things private. Meanwhile, a serial killer roams the streets of Boston, placing everyone in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally on ff.net. This story needed a massive overhaul/edit to make it less of a god-awful mess. But it should read much smoother than the original now.

The ceiling tilted precariously with each heaving breath of the panicked young woman as her eyes struggled to open. After several heaving breaths, reddened eyes met her prison for the first time. If she wasn’t tied down by nylon restraints to a bedframe, she would have gone so far to characterize the large loft as normal.

How long had she been here? It felt like months. The woman attempts for the fiftieth time to regain control of her limbs, yet it was no use. Her captor had tied her down in advance. Fear races through the woman as she realizes that her odds of surviving are slim to none. All of her life responsibilities flashed in brilliant focus: Mother depended on her to support the family since she was the only one who had shown a talent with something profitable and her three younger sisters looked up to her as their very own prima ballerina, no matter how many times she told them otherwise. Her family would surely starve without her income to support.

Clear trails of sadness start to travel down the young woman’s face, falling to the blood soaked sheets. As she cries for mercy, her captor remains still, his only focus on a video of a young woman and man performing an elegant pas de deux. Every inch of the captured woman’s body aches to release the scream bubbling in her throat but she resists, knowing nothing would come of it except a quicker death. As her body continues to pump slow trails of blood from the hundreds of pinprick wounds on every inch of her skin, she wishes for a blessed release from the endless pain. All of the elegance she had used to craft her identity as an elite dancer long since gone. The woman’s tongue fumbles upon itself in an effort to understand why this was happening to someone like her.

“Why,” she pleads in a choked voice. “Why are you doing this to me?”

The video stops, plunging the claustrophobic space into complete darkness. Fear transforms into revulsion as she feels her captor’s callused hands on the length of her long legs. Death awaits her. The end was sure to come, now.

“I can’t start the show without a sleeping beauty can I, little sister?”

His question, left unanswered, as he lifts the syringe in his hand to her neck, injecting the fatal serum into his victim. The young woman quickly went unconscious, allowing the captor to begin his opening act. A slap of rubber gloves echoes through the room as the man starts his work.

***

Jane Rizzoli clenched her hands awkwardly at her side while staring even more awkwardly away from Maura Isles’ eager hazel eyes. She had agreed to accompany Maura, her best friend and now girlfriend, on an impromptu lunch date at the Dirty Robber. The bar was practically empty with the occasional group of friends enjoying the casual lunch atmosphere. Jane and Maura were in their usual booth near the windows, playing with their salads.

After their relationship had shifted toward the intimate direction six months ago, the two women had slowly grown accustomed to the changing definition of their friendship. Maura had taken to being with Jane without much adjustment and, in no time at all, she had begun using pet-names when they were alone.

Each time Maura’s lips uttered seemingly benign statements such as, “Honey, could you walk Jo before you go in to work? Dogs that learn to hold their bowel movements tend to have a seventy-six percent chance of increased anxiety,” or “Remember to wear your charcoal colored slacks tomorrow, sweetheart, because I spilt something on your brown ones,” Jane’s heart stopped in shock, her mind working overtime to determine who exactly Maura was referring to. It wasn’t as if she didn’t like being called by the pet-names that Maura had given her, but it just felt…odd, to say the least.

Much to Maura’s increasing chagrin, Jane had yet to make the decision to tell her coworkers and family about their developing relationship. In the first couple of months, she had continuously found every excuse in the book so as not to disclose what had to have become plainly obvious to anyone with a little bit of common sense. Her go-to had always been “it’s too soon” but now, just passing the six month mark, that reasoning was becoming harder and harder to use.

Jane released an exhausted sigh as her mind drifted from Maura’s expectations in their relationship to the safety of work. Interrogating suspects, questioning perps, and getting results with miniscule leads were all something she could deal with. Understanding the complexities of romance with a woman, however, was outside her expertise.

_Why can’t things just stay the way they are? We’re happy? We have a healthy working relationship, sometimes she stays over at my place and sometimes I stay over at her place. We have amazing sex when we can. I even have several of my work suits in her closet._

“Isn’t that enough?” she whispered.

“Is what not enough? Do you want something more to drink?” Maura replied, looking up from her salad with ranch dressing coming from the corner of her mouth.

Jane froze, shaking her head at the woman’s adorable face. “You’ve got something on your face.”

“What?” Maura said, looking bewildered. “Where? Is it lettuce?”

Jane smirked, reaching out to swipe the dressing off her mouth. She sucked the thick substance off her mouth.

“There you go, all taken care of.”

Maura giggled. “You seem kind of disconnected, honey. You want to talk about it?”

Jane’s looked up in shock, amazed that Maura had figured her out.

“Just enjoying my kale,” Jane said.

“You hate kale.”

“No, I don’t. I just…strongly dislike it. It’s superly delicious today.”

Maura took a sip from Jane’s iced tea. “The only person you’re fooling with that pathetic excuse for a lie is yourself.”

_She always sees right through me, like I’m not even trying to hide my feelings_

The sudden sensation of the caress of a hand Jane knew far too well traced her palm, making her shiver in equal parts arousal and revulsion. Being with Maura intimately was too much for her to process. At times, their transition from friendship to relationship, kind smiles to intimate caresses, and having sleep-overs on top of the covers to underneath the covers seemed impossible.

Just the idea of potentially allowing their private lives to become public fodder at the BPD rumor mill by going public gave her the heebie-jeebies. The last thing Jane needed or wanted was Korsak and Frost having fireside chats about her intimacy with Maura. _Eugh… just the idea of Korsak sitting in my apartment with a yellow golfing vest and no shoes while Frost gives advice on our sex life is physically debilitating._

Maura snapped her fingers, bringing Jane back to focus. “You’re doing it again.”

“Oh…I’m sorry, Maura. It’s just…work.”

“Isn’t it always?”

Maura’s slight smile accompanied her barely noticeable eye roll as she resettled herself back in the cushioned seat. Right on cue, Jane and Maura’s phones started to vibrate at the same time.

“Rizzoli.”

“Isles.”

\---

After a quick stop at Jane’s apartment, they arrived at the crime scene located in a warehouse near Boston’s South End. As they got closer to the scene, they could see several first responders giving their statements to the homicide detectives on call while the CSU techs looked for evidence. The hustle and bustle of the crime scene flooded Jane’s veins, reminding her that work was now her first priority. With her work demeanor firmly in place, she prepared herself mentally for another day of solving murders and catching bad guys.

Before Jane could exit the car, Maura grabbed her arm as she turned off the ignition of her Aston Martin DB9. “I feel like I should say something to you.”

Jane returned Maura’s statement with a quizzical look. “Can’t it wait?”

“No, it can’t wait. I think I want you to know that I…well…I want you to be careful.”

“Umm…okay? I’m always careful,” Jane said, already looking to get to work.

“No, you don’t understand. It’s just so hard for me to say this, to get my mind in order to properly convey this, but I really need you to understand…how much I care for you and your safety.”

Maura’s rambling was interrupted by a loud rapping on the tinted window as Sgt. Korsak knocked on the glass. Det. Frost stood nearby, trying far too hard to appear busy while ogling the Maura’s expensive car like a piece of meat.

The moment broken, Maura reluctantly let go of the last connection she had with Jane before resuming their work roles as separate entities, their relationship temporarily forgotten. Maura had hardly locked the door of the car when she noticed that Jane was already gone, without as much as a glance or farewell.

Talking to Jane about her feelings was next to impossible, especially when she got into work mode. Maura’s emotional desires and needs didn’t seem to affect Jane and that hurt her more than she could ever know. _Being with Jane is just like how it is with my mother. I can’t bear to inconvenience her by asking for more._

Her tools in hand, the medical examiner readied herself for another victim, her mind still travelling back to her difficult girlfriend. Providing victims with a voice to speak was exhausting work but it wasn’t nearly as exhausting as dealing with Jane’s idiosyncrasies. Being in a relationship with the serious detective gave her a mental workout on the same level as Organic Chemistry back in college except for the lack of accolades received after finally figuring out a particular concept.

_Well, I wouldn’t say there is a lack of accolades…Jane’s surprisingly romantic when she’s not at work or when it’s just the two of us. Just last night, I could barely believe that she was so tender and loving. The way she held me tight against her chest, unwrapped me, released me, wiped away my tears…it was perfection on the same level as a substance high._

Maura found herself at times so starved for the affection that only Jane could provide that she was willing to accept the pain of fighting with her best friend in the hope that something would change. Giving up on Jane was not an option. She needed her like she needed air.

“Maura, you okay?” Frost asked, stopping Maura before she reached the crime scene tape blocking the entrance to the warehouse. “It’s pretty nasty in there. If you aren’t up to it, we can always get another M.E. to release.”

Maura’s eyes appraised the young detective’s anxious body with a friendly smile. “I thought we worked on that, Detective? You’re still having trouble dealing with crime scenes?”

“No, well…no,” Frost sighed. “That body has been mutilated in the worst kind of way. She’s got this big hole in her chest and her heart is gone, not to mention the creepy message written on the wall. The whole thing just screams serial. Korsak is still trying to write it off as just a sadistic one-off.”

“I’ll be fine, Detective. I’ve seen my share of wrongness applied to the human body,” Maura replied, walking toward the back of the warehouse where the body lay. Each step into the dark cavern lit only by small random slats of sunlight made her increasingly nervous. She knew that the feeling was nothing more than a direct result of the depth perception in the dimly lit space, yet logic did little to assuage her anxiety.

Maura’s heels continued to strike the cement, dust clogging the heavy air. A familiar voice called out to her and she quickly walked toward it.

“Korsak, thank god, I felt like I was getting-”

Jane interrupted from her position at the foot of the naked body posed on the floor. “Disoriented? Same here. What’s with this place anyway? It’s like some kind of a chapel to the patron saint of asylums.”

“Actually, there is no patron saint in the Catholic faith that pertains to asylums, Jane. St. Dymphna is the closest possible interpretation. She is attributed to mental illnesses and neurological disorders. According to oral traditions, Dymphna was a young woman who was beheaded by her father because she refused to replace her mother in his bed.” Maura recited, her eyes analyzing each element of the crime scene, quickly and efficiently. Korsak smiled at Maura’s unusual analysis while Jane comically groaned, turning her eyes to look over at her best friend.

“And the relevance of that lovely fact is?”

“Whoever chose this location for the body is highly intelligent. He or she clearly took the time to plan every aspect of this murder and probably feels little remorse for his actions.”

Maura’s eyes travelled around the body posed on the floor and released a sigh of pity for the dead woman. Her pale body was scarred with several open wounds, dried blood covering most of her pale skin. Most noticeably, her heart had been crudely but efficiently removed, leaving nothing more than a hole of empty decaying flesh. The deceased’s lean musculature pointed toward an involvement in some kind of intense athletic activity for some time. What grabbed Maura’s attention the most was her facial features. Brown hair with platinum blonde roots covered the youthful woman’s unmarked face, eyes concealed behind a heavy velvet blindfold.

_Her hair has been dyed, it appears to be a rush job. Why cover her eyes though? Did she resist her attacker?_

Maura quickly appraised the victim’s hands for any sign of a struggle and saw the contusions around her wrists, knees, and ankles.

_So she was bound…_

Maura answered the questions that logically asserted themselves in her head, causing even more questions to assert themselves. _There’s only so much I can do without the lab._

“You’ve got that look, Maura. Got something I can run with?” Jane said quietly, not wanting to startle the medical examiner. The blonde turned to face the detectives with a troubled frown before kneeling down for a closer look.

“Don’t I always?” Maura mused. “Now, this is all based off of my preliminary diagnosis, but I can definitively say that Jane Doe was bound to restrict her movement. In conjunction with the contusions on her wrists and lower extremities, there is some slight petechial hemorrhaging on her face.  Until I get her in the morgue, I won’t be able to give you a definitive answer as to what caused her injuries though. Interestingly enough, if you turn your attention to her hair, you’ll notice it has been dyed with little attention to detail, given the plainly evident blonde roots.”

“Anything else?”

Maura moved toward the feet of Jane Doe and noticed the slight deformity of the feet along with the calluses near the toes. “She’s a dancer. Probably practiced _en pointe_ work, in my professional opinion.”

Jane wrote down the word “Dancer” in her notepad. “For how long?”

“Assumptions are hardly productive to proper scientific inquiry, Jane.” Maura said before catching sight of Jane’s annoyed face. “But, if I had to make an educated guess using my own personal experience with _en pointe_ work as a foundation, I’d say about twelve to fifteen years given the degree of deformity of her feet. Given the extreme arch in her feet, her bones hadn’t ossified properly before intensive work was started. So she’d be about…twenty-one or twenty-two, give or take a year or two.”

Jane stood up from the body and paced a few steps before turning to look back at Maura. “So we have a ballerina in her prime who was bound and got a bad dye job, presumably unwillingly. That’s not a lot, Maura.”

“I’m sorry,” Maura whispered just loud enough for Jane to hear. “It’s the best that I can do until I get her in autopsy.”

“I know, I know.” Jane said, kicking the dusty, scuffed floor.

With a frown, the detective pointed toward the wall closest to the victim. “Do you think you can do anything with that given the state of the body?”

Maura followed Jane’s finger toward a message written in blood on the one wall not marked in small holes to allow sunlight to come into the empty warehouse. Most of the crime scene techs were busy trying to photograph and process the message for future reference. Motioning to one of her assistants to bring her the form to sign off on the body’s removal, she stood up to see the message in a better light.

The height of the letters along with the neatness of the manuscript again suggested a high level of planning. Blood dripped from the letters, even drop landing on the floor, mixing with the dust and plaster. Contrasting against the pale grey landscape, the phrase seemed to demand attention from the living occupants investigating the crime scene.

**The Beauty slumbers peacefully awaiting the kiss that will set her free amongst the Sin.**

Maura’s mind struggled to interpret the unusual axiom. “This isn’t good, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Korsak said, joining the medical examiner as she sat in awe of the message before her.

“Whoever this guy,” Jane started before Maura’s disapproving look quickly stopped her, “sorry, Maura. Whoever this _person_ is, he or she knows we’ve got nothing. Now all we can do it wait.”

Turning on her heels, Jane left the crime scene while Maura and Korsak looked at each other with understanding looks.

“She’s just focused on finding this guy.”

“I know,” Maura sighed. “Just make sure she doesn’t run out of steam.”


	2. Chapter 2

Their lunch date forgotten, Jane reluctantly left the crime scene to the remaining techies to follow Maura in the coroner’s van with the body. Sitting alone in the Aston, each mile of stressful rush-hour Boston traffic dissipated with the simplicity and elegance of the leather lined interior of Maura’s luxury sports-car. For the first time since everything that had happened several months ago, Jane welcomed the silence.

***

Slivers of moonlight flickered across the two intertwined women, exhaustion having finally taken the place of passion. Locks of brown met with blonde upon the stained sheets and, after briefly tussling for dominance, they had declared a pleasant truce. Silence spread through the blonde’s darkened bedroom.

“Why don’t you talk to me?” Maura said as exhaustion of a different kind became stronger in the privacy of their bed. A growl worked its way up her throat before Jane could restrain it as Maura’s illuminated hands mapped out the smooth rise and fall of her still erect nipples, glistening with the remains of their previous actions. Jane’s breathing was coming in shuddered gasps, her body again rising to the challenge that her girlfriend clearly wanted to impose.

A breeze shivered through the blinds before Maura’s hands reached the seizing expanse of rippling muscle and taut skin. “I hate…talking. More…god, just more of this, please.”

“Tell me,” Maura pleaded softly as she continued to move further toward her goal. “Tell me why. Why don’t you talk to me?”

Despite her lack of rest, Jane knew she would not be getting any sleep for a while longer. The brunette thought her stamina was legendary but Maura was proving to be insatiable. Impossibly long fingers probed the depths of Jane’s existence with a level of skill that marveled the detective; each rapid caress of Maura’s tongue on her clitoris combined with the changing rhythms of her investigation concerning Jane’s clenching sex taking her farther up the hill.

“Please,” Jane pleaded desperately as need quickly replaced pride.

The blonde stopped her task briefly. “Tell me, Jane.”

The answering scream echoed throughout the room before Jane could process that she had released it. “Because…I’m scared, Maura. Scared of all of this, with you and me. Being with you scares the hell out of me. Are you happy now?”

***

After that conversation, everything had changed. Maura had immediately gotten up from the bed, dressed in silence, and went for a run…for about, oh, I don’t know, _three hours_. Jane knew that her best friend loved running in a way that she never could or would in this lifetime but even she began to feel worried after the first hour. When Maura did finally show up… Jane gripped the Aston’s steering wheel impulsively with the same frustration that had overcome her that night.

***

With a jolt, Jane’s crumpled frame jolted upright from her awkward position on Maura’s comfortable couch. The blonde’s face fell as soon as the brunette’s impossibly tangled locks cleared in her vision and she strolled by the detective as if she wasn’t even there.

Excitement taking over her best judgment, Jane vaulted over the couch and grabbed her girlfriend’s hand before she could walk away.  “What the hell were you thinking? Who goes out running in the middle of the night? Rapists, Maura. Rapists and serial killers. I know you sometimes forget that the world isn’t all Happy-Green-Acres, but I need you to try a little harder using that big brain of yours for common-sense. You could have gotten hurt.” Jane exclaimed before her voice trailed off in a whisper. “I could have lost you.”

“I know.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Jane asked furiously, her hand ripping through the tangled mess of her long brunette locks. “What’s going on with you? You’ve always been odd but this is beyond your usual. I said I was sorry for saying what I did. I…I didn’t know what I was saying, Maura. You’re a big girl, Maura, so why the fuck are you making childish decisions like going for a run in the middle of the night without even taking your phone?”

The blonde’s eyes remained glued to the floor. “Because…”

“So we’ve gone from two word answers to one word answers…we’re really getting to the heart of the matter aren’t we?” Jane’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but as Maura’s face lifted toward her to reveal the tears that had flowed from red veined eyes, sadness soon took its place.

“I wanted to know what it felt like…to be scared of something you love with every fiber of your being.” The tears that had stopped flowing now resumed, making Jane feel even more shitty for making her girlfriend cry.

“Honey,” Jane muttered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The detective moved Maura into her arms, releasing the tension of the night. Each muffled wail from the distraught blonde in Jane’s arms made the frustration she felt even more poignant. But, despite her efforts to stay focused, the slight aroma of sex still hung in the air around the two of them, reminding her of what they were doing together.

The moment of reassurance was quickly broken as the one factor that the two lovers had forgotten about popped up at just the wrong time, Angela Rizzoli.

“Janey, what’s going on? Is Maura alright?” Angela said innocently.

Maura quickly separated from Jane’s embrace, smiling briefly toward Jane’s mother before running back to her bedroom. “Ma’…come on! This isn’t your house! You can’t just go traipsing around in the middle of the night like Boston’s very own Batman. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“I saw the lights and I heard you trying to whisper so I assumed something was wrong,” Angela walked toward Jane and looked quizzically in the direction of Maura’s bedroom, “and looks like I was right. Is Bass okay or is it something else?”

Jane sighed, knowing she would end up sleeping on the couch now that her mom was up and alert. There would be no way she could sneak into her girlfriend’s room without causing her mother to start asking unnecessary questions that Jane didn’t particularly feel ready to answer. It killed her to know that Maura was alone when she needed her the most to comfort and assuage the doubts and fears running through her mind but there was nothing she could do, except wait and hope that Angela went back to bed fairly quickly.

“Come on,” Jane said with one last hopeful look toward Maura’s door. “Let’s go make some coffee.”

***

Typical of her mother, she had refused to go back to bed, chatting Jane up until the bright colors of day hit the windows of Maura’s home. By the time she had managed to slip away, Maura was sleeping soundly and Jane could hardly find the will to wake her. With everything that had happened that night, she deserved some peace even if it was just in her own mind but far too much was still left unsaid from the both of them.

They had woken up at different times and Jane couldn’t even stay for lunch because she had to check up on Jo Friday and attempt to wash the stack of clothes that had been accumulating in her apartment. Jane wondered when she would be comfortable discussing her feelings with Maura. Their lunch date earlier could have been an opportunity to clear the air but, in her typical fashion, Jane screwed it up by being so distant.

Jane’s head sunk toward the steering wheel, the sudden wave of self-grief shocking her into submission. Never had the detective felt such an unbelievable sense of anxious indecision. She was completely at a loss with how to handle this situation properly and not being able to find a proper solution that would bring the desired results was problematic.  But, the congested traffic subsided, movement increased, and Jane forced her focus to return back to the task at hand. Catching a potential serial before he could kill again was far more relevant, despite her heart telling her otherwise. With a slight press against the acceleration pedal of the Aston, Jane powered through the now clear streets behind the coroner’s van. A hum of approval rose in a rising crescendo from the finely tuned engine and even more memories took hold, despite Jane’s best efforts to ignore them.

***

“You’re going way too fast, Jane!” Maura frowned, clutching the seatbelt. “I said you could drive the Aston, not race it through the streets like some kind of…street racer.”

“Wow, I’m reeling with that comeback.” Jane said sarcastically, skillfully maneuvering the sports car through a corner, braking slightly but quickly resuming speed upon exiting the corner. “Come on, you have an Aston Martin DB9. The top speed is nearly 200 miles per hour and you rarely take it over seventy-five. This baby wants – no, needs me – to drive it fast to release all of the 500 horses that you refuse to use. This is a favor to you, honey. And, what do you expect? We did go to driving school for my birthday, remember?”

“Actually, the top speed is closer to 190,”Maura’s stated simply. “But I guess if I used slick tires for increased traction and tuned the engine with an emphasis on racing it could increase the top speed to 200… Hmm, maybe I should take it to Watkins Glen on one of my free weekends to prove my hypothesis?”

“Hell yeah. The instructor said I had natural talent behind the wheel. I can drive you there?” Jane asked excitedly, turning toward Maura with a smile.

“No, unless I have to get there in a body bag,” Maura said, rolling her eyes as the world blurred with the increasing speed that Jane continued to coax from the willing machine. “I have no intention to extend this experience any longer.”

“C’mon, you know you love it when I go fast,” Jane teased, the honking from slower drivers barely noticeable in the noise insulated interior of the Aston. “You didn’t seem to complain last night about doing it fast. Actually, you seemed to like it quite a lot, actually.”

A blush of embarrassment rose to Maura’s cheeks as she quickly turned away from the preoccupied detective. “What we do in the bedroom has no bearing on our current actions. You’re just trying to provoke me.”

Jane laughed heartily. “Is it working?”

“A little,” Maura smirked.

“Good,” Jane stopped briefly to shift to a higher gear for even more speed. “I love seeing you get a little crazy for me.”

***

Knocking from the driver’s side window stole Jane away from the pleasant reverie of happier times. Impressively, she had managed to drive to BPD with only half of her brain focused on driving and the other half on vacation thinking about Maura Isles. Sweeping the thought aside, the harried detective spent a millisecond resuming her identity as Det. Rizzoli. With a smile, she downed the window to meet her partner’s confused face. His eagerness toward seeing Maura’s car up close was obvious as he subconsciously bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Korsak has already gone inside to put our Jane Doe’s fingerprints in the system to see if a name pops out in a database somewhere,” Frost stated. “Maura went downstairs to start the autopsy. Most of the CSU techs have started preliminary analysis of the evidence from the scene and should have it back within a couple of hours at the most, but you know how those lab guys go. They spend so much time holed up in their mass-spectrometers that they’ve forgotten the rules of society. A couple of hours to them could mean a couple of days to us.”

The crime scene techs were notoriously for being just like the head medical examiner: methodical, slow, and precise. More times than she was willing to admit, Jane had to go downstairs to light a fire underneath Maura and the techies’ asses to get them to work with a little bit more urgency. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, again. The last time, Maura had made her regret it.

“Let’s try to think positive, alright? Korsak has the right idea. Let’s work with what we have and concentrate getting all we can out of it. If our Jane Doe is in the system, it’ll make things that much easier.”

Frost nodded approvingly, his gaze remained glued to the beautifully curved lines of Maura’s car. Following his eyes, Jane quickly raised the window and exited the car after removing the keys from the ignition. “Do you want me to introduce you two? I was chatting her up and I think she’s really into you,” she joked.

“You’re so funny,” Frost muttered sarcastically, closing the door gingerly behind Jane. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Why does Maura let you drive her car, anyway? I’m her friend too and she’s never even offered me a ride home, but you get to drive it…by yourself, nonetheless.”

“And your point is…”

“Maybe you two are more than friends?” Frost said slyly.

Jane’s body tensed slightly as they climbed the stairs to the elevator that would take them up to Homicide’s bullpen. Frost’s question surprised her, not because he asked it, but because it surprised her in the first place. Even though she and Maura had started dating after the shooting, no one had put the two of them together intimately. Until she was ready to tell everyone, she had no intention to share anything.

_Oh my god…does he actually know? Who told him?_ _Maura…it had to be her. That woman couldn’t lie to save her ass._

In response to her anxiety, Frost extended his hand toward Jane’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort his partner. “Hey, you okay? What’s got you so riled up?”

“Nothing,” she croaked, shying away from his touch. “Let’s just focus our attention on trying to catch this serial before he escalates into something worse. Hopefully, Korsak or Maura have gotten something for us to pound the pavement with.”


	3. Chapter 3

The normally busy atmosphere of homicide was even busier than usual as Jane, Korsak, and Frost focused their attentions on gaining a lead with the scanty amount of evidence they currently had to work with. Knowing the repercussions of allowing a case like this to get out of hand, every detective free in the bullpen was also pulling their weight on the case. Even with all of the help, they still had nothing more than Maura’s preliminary findings: a Jane Doe that danced professionally with her heart ripped out of her chest and a message written beside her body in blood. Jane had worked with less on several cases before in her career but never had with the threat of a serial potentially escalating in the background. As her hands danced quickly across the keyboard, Jane knew that there was nothing she could do except wait for Maura’s call that the autopsy was complete.

After several minutes of meaningless searching, Korsak walked out from BRIC with an excited look on his face. “Got something.”

Jane and Frost got up before Korsak could even finish and ran toward the room. Jane Doe and her identification were already displayed on the wall monitors. “Nice job, Korsak. You found the Doe’s records. What have we got?”

Frost zoomed in, focusing on the pictures that had been placed in the dead woman’s database file. With a frown, Jane imagined the media circus that would develop if the press caught wind of a serial killer targeting beautiful women in Boston. Absolute chaos, pure and simple.

“Victim’s name is Alina Bobrova, imported from Russia as a guest dancer specializing as a principal character artist for the Boston Ballet. Her passport records state she arrived several months ago from the Mariinski Ballet Company in St. Petersburg, Russia. Given how many magazines feature the woman on their cover, she was apparently big stuff in her home country, not to mention she had an official passport.”

“So,” Jane said, leaning forward. “What’s the big deal with an official passport? Aren’t all passports official?”

“You’re thinking of a regular passport used by tourists. Unless you’re travelling for governmental business, it’s pretty rare for normal citizens of any country to get that kind of clearance.”

“So how’d she get something like that?”

“Apparently she was acting as a temporary diplomat between Russia and America as a way to help smooth over Cold War tensions via artistic pursuits.”

Korsak clicked through several pictures, stopping at a large image showing Bobrova dancing in an elaborate costume back in Russia.

“As an isolated incident, a murder of a Russian dancer on loan in US soil is, at the very least, a PR nightmare for Boston, but if we take into account that this probably isn’t going to be an isolated incident…you, me, and Frost will probably lose our jobs when the department tries to save face.”

Frost laughed. “I’ve always wanted to be a scapegoat.”

Jane ran her hands through her tangled curls, tension making her fingers tingle with adrenaline. “This is going to be a mess. Is there any way we can keep the brass out of this? At least until we find a lead that we can run without them calling the staties. You know them. They’ll be all up our asses, rushing us and what not.”

Korsak sighed heavily. “Jane, I’m a sergeant, not a miracle worker. As soon as the captain catches wind that this is a potential serial, he’s going to get involved whether you like or not,” he stated. “Let’s just run this case like we normally do and deal with the politics when and if they come.”

Jane knew that he was right, but it hardly made things easier to accept. Having the state police snooping around her case, no matter what their intentions were, was just a preliminary to having the case taken from her command under some stupid reasoning that boiled down to the fact that she was a woman in a unit that was already severely backlogged with cases, as is. Nothing irritated the detective more than having a case taken from her. Shaking her head in a lame attempt to get her frustration out, she turned to Frost to hear his opinion.

“Frost,” she sighed, returning her eyes back to Alina’s picture displayed on the monitors. “Lay it out.”

Frost nodded. “Alina Bobrova, our Jane Doe, was murdered by an unknown killer with high levels of intelligence and/or planning abilities. Most significantly, her heart was taken from her body as a trophy of some time for the killer, but until we hear from Maura, that’s hardly concrete. We do know for certain that our victim was dancing or had danced at the Boston Ballet on loan. I say we start asking questions there. It’s as good a starting place as any,” he said, yawning in exhaustion.

Korsak saw the detective’s response and lifted his salt-and-pepper eyebrows in exaggerated shock. “What? Can’t handle the pace, BBK?”

“C’mon, I don’t do that anymore…as much. You can’t blame me for being tired. I’ve been up for about sixteen hours working that jewelry heist case and now this mess.” Frost looked pleadingly toward Jane for back-up, receiving nothing more than an amused smile. “I’d really appreciate just a couple of hours of recharge.”

“Not my call, Frost. I’m not a sergeant, after all.” she exaggerated, turning in her chair toward Korsak with a dirty look.

Seconds of uncomfortable silence spread through BRIC as Korsak tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore their pleading eyes. Jane knew the older detective would break eventually.

“Fine,” he said, throwing his hands up in annoyance. “Take a couple of hours and come back in the morning. Then we’ll head to the Boston Ballet for questioning. Is that better for you?”

Frost enthusiastically nodded and Jane laughed before the vibration at her hip attracted her attention. She knew who it was even before looking, but that hardly changed the feeling of relief that overwhelmed Jane’s emotions upon seeing her girlfriend’s name displayed on the screen.

_Maura…_

“Boy, am I glad to hear from you. You got something for me?” she asked, grabbing her blazer after nodding her leave from the other detectives. “Yeah, I’ll be right down.”

\---

With a small whoosh of released air, Jane walked from the elevator to the autopsy room, the adjacent rooms normally full of busy techs now silent with the later than usual hour. Each of the echoing steps made by her heeled shoes reminded her of the near death experience that had taken place in this building. Both of those harrowing moments had brought Jane closer to Maura but had also brought numerous problems to her relatively uncomplicated existence. Upon turning the corner to see Maura’s barely restrained excitement reflected in her hazel eyes, Jane knew without a doubt that she wouldn’t have taken those experiences back for anything.

“Even with blood and guts dripping from your hair, you still manage to look marvelous.” Jane smiled at Maura’s laughable attempts to see if she really had blood in her hair. “I hope you didn’t wait up for me, Maura. It’s nearly two in the morning.”

Maura frowned. “Is it? No wonder it’s so dark in here.”

“What have you got?”

“Do you think I should cut my hair?”

“What?” Jane asked bewilderedly.

“My hair. It’s always in the way. Did you know that I could lose my license for getting my hair mixed up with the bodies? It’s considered ‘indirect contamination’ by the state. When I was doing my residency, one of doctors suggested that I should cut it. He said that it got in the way of caring for patients and was a reflection of vanity. I think he was just jealous of me because of his alopecia.”

Jane laughed. “Honey, if anyone tells you to cut your hair because it gets in the way, I’ll cut them myself.”

“Aww…that’s sweet and surprisingly violent. And that’s why I put up with you. Because you treat me like I’m only thing that matters, whenever work doesn’t get in the way.” Maura muttered, hardly noticing the slight tensing of Jane’s hands against her side.“But, you’re getting me off focus. I know what killed our Jane Doe.”

“So what is it?”

“Do you even care to guess?”

“No,” the detective frowned, “I don’t. I can give you something in exchange for COD, though. Her name is Alina Bobrova.”

Maura smiled, leaning down to tuck an errant hair behind the dead woman’s ear. “What a beautiful name. Her facial bone structure is characteristic of Eastern European ethnicities.”

Turning to the computer behind her, Maura touched the screen to display a visual of Alina’s neck. “The killer used a pure extract from _Atropa belladonna_ , a flower better known as Deadly Nightshade, because of its connection to the nightshade family of plants which includes such innocuous items such as potatoes, but, belladonna differs.”

“Ooh, I know!” Jane exclaimed sarcastically, raising her hand like a child. “It differs in the way people use it to kill.”

Maura rolled her eyes. “Yes, more specifically, in its high level of toxicity.”

Jane looked from the body and back to the image being displayed across the touchscreen monitor. “So why are we looking at her neck?”

“If you just let me finish, I would have gotten to that.” Maura touched a small injection mark on Alina’s neck, zooming in on the site, revealing slight bruising near the area. “CSU determined that the extract was atropine, a beneficial drug, if used correctly, as a way to increase low heart rate, but if the proper dosage is ignored it can become toxic. Because of atropine’s hallucinogenic properties, victims can literally go mad.”

“How much did she have in her system?”

“Nearly thirty-five mg, several times the suggested dosage.”

Jane shook her head in sympathy. “How long did it take for her to die?”

“Given the needle marks near her vein, I can safely assess that she was given multiple dosages. The killer raised the dosage with each injection, presumably to safeguard her coherency throughout the entire process. Upon injection of the final dosage, however, she would have had a ten to fifteen minute window but the weakness of her body would have acted as a facilitator.”

Maura swiped the screen again, revealing a close up the victim’s chest. “I suspect that soon after she was injected with the fatal dose of atropine, the killer removed Ms. Bobrova’s heart,” she said, leaning over the gaping maw in the victim’s chest with an intrigued smile. “In medical school, I hated cardiology, with a passion. It’s so hard to realize that a human is nothing more than an endless array of electric impulses and the surgery technique was, excuse the pun, heartless. You make a mistake on a dead body, it’s not a problem. You make a mistake while performing a heart transplant, people will die, someone is going to have to make a horrible phone call…god, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Jane growled in warning. “Maura…”

“I can’t tell you why the murderer took her heart, Jane. I have several theories, but at this point, they are just theories. I _can_ tell you that she wasn’t sexually assaulted because of the lack of vaginal bruising and tearing. Our victim also has a high BAC that would have left her unable to stand or defend herself. With all of these details, I can hypothesize that this murder was personal in nature.”

“You might have a point,” Jane commented. “Why get a woman you don’t know drunk, poison her slowly, and torture her to the point of taking out her heart if you don’t know her?”

Maura nodded. “I’ve sent several samples of unusual specimens found on the body to the lab for further testing. I should hear back soon.”

“Well, when’s soon?”

“I’d be guessing.”

Jane’s sigh filled the autopsy room, her mind racing with frustration. Frustration seeped away, leaving nothing except pure exhaustion in its place. Despite Jane’s best efforts to appear unaffected by the late hour, she lowered her head heavily into her hands. Her body leaned against the metal autopsy table, eyes soon closing with little mental input on her part.

“You can stay at my place for a couple of hours?” Maura asked in a voice softened with a level of sensitivity that always managed to marvel Jane.

The brunette shook her head with miniscule effort. “No…I need to stay close. Korsak, Frost, and I are planning to hit the pavement bright and early to get some questioning done.”

“I don’t understand…why do you want to hit the pavement? Violence against inanimate objects is a reflection of an unhealthy inclination toward passive aggressive personality traits, according to a detailed study by the University of Padua in the early 80s. If you’re frustrated, you could try jogging…” the blonde medical examiner suggested before realizing that Jane was using one of her many idioms. “Sorry. You could sleep in my office, if you want?”

“You…you wouldn’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

Jane chuckled, making her way to the dimly lit office. “I could break your creepy African masks or carve my name in your desk.”

“You wouldn’t…” Maura began. “Would you?”

“Of course not. I’d have to go through the trouble of breaking into your medical equipment drawer for a scalpel. Unless you have a knife handy…”

Maura rolled her eyes as her girlfriend started to slip off her shoes in an effort to get comfortable. With a smile, she moved toward a small cupboard, taking out several blankets and a pillow.

“Why the hell do you have those?” Jane asked, looking at the sheets with a raised eyebrow. “You spend a lot of time at the lab for those weekly sleepovers with the techies?”

“No,” Maura replied. “Sometimes the lab loses power and we get stuck without heat during the winter months.”

“So you and the techies have Brokeback Mountain time by trying to 'stay warm' under the blankets.”

Maura rolled her eyes, playfully throwing the blankets at the detective. “Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” Jane replied. “I’ll stop needling you. And…thanks for this.”

Jane got comfortable with her makeshift cot on Maura’s antique couch. As Maura gathered her things to head home, the detective already began to snore.

With her Birkin in hand, Maura stared at her girlfriend in amusement. “Sleep well, sweetheart.”

“Hmm… I love you, Maubie,” Jane mumbled.

“Wait…” Maura said, her hand frozen over the light switch. “Did you just call me, Maubie? Like Moby Dick? That’s your idea of a pet name?”

But Jane was already fast asleep, her snores steadily increasing in volume.

***

Colors from every spectrum of the rainbow reflect against the white walls of the sparsely furnished loft as a high-end sound system blares classical music through the space. Near the full-length window, an elegant man stretches on a barre near the small dance area, marked by the full length mirror and the wooden floor. His legs stretch in full extension, using the barre as support. His focus is exclusively on the connection between his body and the classical music flowing throughout the space.

Stepping away from the barre, he executes a quick battement, his active leg extending forward and backward in precision before stepping into several rapid turns. Each turn is en pointe, next to effortless. Graceful turns become light leaps, light leaps easily transform into whimsical pirouettes, each movement showcasing his high degree of advanced skill and training. Twenty minutes of extended work to Chopin and his tense muscles release into a final slow extension of his arms above his head. He bows his head slightly in respect to the music.

Grabbing the leg warmers and the sweater that are carefully folded on the couch, he puts them on with precise movements before turning the music off. Despite the intensive work-out, the sandy haired man’s blue eyes are bright with excitement and pleasure.

“I like the movements…could be a little difficult for some of the younger girls but it’ll force them to stretch their skills and rise to a challenge. If you were here, Matryona, it would be so much easier,” he mutters under his breath.

Unexpectedly, an alarm sound from the speakers of the television interrupt the lithe dancer’s mental train of thought. “It’s time to see how the critics have taken our first act.”

With a small wave of his hands, the motion activated system on the television turns to the local news channel. The traditional sounds of the news program hit the man’s ears, causing him to flinch slightly. He immediately turns down the volume.

Nothing could take away his excitement. Finally, the world would soon know her name…he would make sure of that. And once they knew her name…his final goal would present itself, bringing him ever closer to Matryona. Just two more, two more sacrifices before Ekaterina was his.

Minutes pass and still no mention of his opening act. “They have ignored us, Matryona. No matter. We’ll go immediately into the adagio, won’t we?”

A bead of sweat moves from his forehead to his darkened blue eyes. “I know how much you hate to rush, but we have no choice. Do not worry. I will maintain the integrity of the performance, you can be sure.”


	4. Chapter 4

The smell of coffee and cappuccino wafted into Jane’s lungs before her mind had fully awakened from the mildly peaceful slumber of a night spent in on Maura’s lumpy-ass couch in her office. Getting up from the temporary bed, she stretched her contorted limbs with a yawn. Jane turned her head toward the smell of coffee with a sleepy smile.

“I smell coffee,” Jane growled.

“I figured you might need some morning fuel,” Maura replied, tapping the messy haired brunette on the head with her usual coffee order. “Two sugars, black, right?”

Jane groaned before gratefully taking the cup in her hands. “You spoil me, Maura.”

“Trust me, I know.” Maura took off her coat and placed it behind her white chair with a smile. “You best drink that on the go. Korsak called. He says he’s going to head out to the Boston Ballet without you if you don’t meet them in fifteen minutes.”

Jane checked her watch. “Damn…I didn’t know I slept that long. He’s gonna have my ass.”

“The Boston Ballet has been increasing the quality of their repertoire recently. The Russian ballet academies are particularly known for producing highly skilled dancers. Do you need me to go with? My mother has sponsored the company since its inception. Did you know I used to dance with the company? I danced the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy in their annual production of the Nutcracker. The critics said I was extremely memorable for being only seventeen.”

Jane chuckled. “You were a ballerina?”

“Yes,” Maura replied. “Does that surprise you?”

“Not as much as the image of you wearing legwarmers, a leotard, and a tutu does.”

Maura rolled her eyes. “Laugh all you want. Regardless of your amusement, my wearing a tutu while performing art with my body is not as embarrassing as you calling me Maubie.”

“I never called you that.”

“Yeah, you did. Remember, last night, before you fell asleep?”

Jane moved into Maura’s personal space, just as Maura did the same, neither wavering under the other’s death stare. “Well…let’s say I did call you that…what if you just forgot that I called you that?”

“I can’t, honey,” Maura replied with mock pity. “I already wrote it in my journal, in ink. This is so cute, Jane. You call me Maubie and I call you my little Jeddy Bear-”

The brunette’s face dropped, immediately muffling Maura’s mouth. “Stop, just stop. Do not call me that at work unless everyone at BPD suddenly dies of an outbreak of bubonic plague. I was tired and made a mistake. Let’s just leave it at that, alright?”

“What are we leaving at that?” Frost asked, walking in with Korsak. The two detectives immediately slowed their pace upon seeing the two women squaring off in preparation for an argument. As frustrated as Jane was toward the pet-name slip, she knew that appearances had to be upheld over her own pride.

Stepping away from her girlfriend, she turned back to them with a forced smile. “Umm…Maura is planning on spending a couple of weeks in one of her mother’s summer homes in Switzerland. She wants me to watch her pet turtle until she gets back. Jo hates the turtle, I hate the turtle, so, therefore, no turtle-sitting. So, ready to head out?”

“Tortoise, Jane. Bass is a tortoise. How come you always forget that?”

Ignoring Maura’s comment, Korsak looked disapprovingly at his ex-partner’s bedhead tangled curls and slept in clothes from yesterday with a frown. “Are you ready?”

“Come on, Korsak. What’s the first thing they teach in the academy? Always be prepared. I always keep a spare pair of clothes, toothbrush, and a comb just in case. With morning traffic, I’ll have plenty of time to become presentable in the car.”

The three detectives walked out, leaving Maura alone. Before she could walk back to her desk, Jane came rushing back with a look of embarrassment on her face.

“Call me when you get the lab results. And…um, I’ll…uh…I’ll miss you,” the harried detective whispered. She looked over her shoulder and, finding no one present, hugged Maura. The awkwardness of holding her girlfriend with a coffee cup in the way soon gave way to comfort as Jane’s hands instinctually came up to hold her in a firm embrace against her strong frame, tension that she didn’t even know was present evaporating away with Maura’s reciprocal movements. It felt odd to hug Maura in a public area where anyone could see them, but the risk was forgotten in the feel of the medical examiner’s hands around her shoulders.

But the moment was brief. Jane’s responsibilities pressed on her mind and Maura’s office phone rang loudly for the busy medical examiner’s attention. A groan of dissatisfaction rose from their throats, their hands twitching around their forgotten coffee cups with the need to reconnect for longer than a moment.

“I need to talk. You think you can get some time off tonight? We can meet at your place or mine, whichever is best for you,” she said in a hushed tone.

“Alright, but do you think _you’ll_ be able to get off work with the case?”

“I’ll make time.” Jane looked back behind her anxiously, expecting to see Frost lurking. “I’ve got to go before we get caught whispering together. Call me, even if you don’t have anything new to report.”

“I’ll miss you too, Jane,” she waved goodbye as the brunette raced off to meet the other detectives. Sadly, Jane was already too far gone to hear her response.

\---

Traffic was, as Jane had predicted, miserably slow going, but with Korsak’s experience with unused back-roads and Frost’s control over the GPS unit that had been installed. Korsak pulled into a parking space near the dance hall and, for once in her life, wished she had brought Maura along. The Boston Opera House reeked of history, tradition, and old money. She had gone to one of their annual productions of “The Nutcracker” as a child on a field trip, but it was one thing to be in the audience and quite another to be investigating a potential serial killer.

Now was not the time to be amazed, however, as they entered the building and were directed toward one of the main entrances leading to the stage. Stay focused, Jane scolded herself mentally. We’re here to talk to the artistic director about the victim, not to watch the tutus and leotards.

Upon entering the raised audience seating area looking down upon the stage, Jane felt the same stirrings of awe that had impressed itself on her as child. Male and female dancers were leaping, twirling, and bouncing around the stage with emotion swelling out from their extended arms toward the imagined enraptured audience. Never had she seen such self-control before.

_Maybe I should apologize to Maura about laughing at her being a ballerina if she looked like this._

“How are we going to handle this, Jane?” Frost whispered, his eyes searching the mass of dancers on the large lighted stage. “I don’t think running up and picking out dancers to ask them questions is a good idea.”

Before Jane could respond, a man who couldn’t have been much older than thirty-five with facial features that appeared as they were carved from marble, walked down from a raised balcony with a megaphone in his hand. The man was dressed in a tailored suit that looked to be designed to be able to come off at a moment’s notice, a dancer background evident in the lightness of his gait but those eyes were mildly disconcerting.

“You’d be right, sir,” the middle-aged man stated simply. “Interrupting the corps while they perform, even in practice, would be unacceptable. When one is on stage, nothing else matters but the audience, the music, and the performance. It is a sacred bond of the utmost importance to the danseur and danseuse of the company, no matter the level of skill. Even suggesting an unscheduled interruption…” he cringed at the thought, “it makes me slightly sick to my stomach. If you wish to talk to me or the dancers of this company, learn some basic manners, first.”

Taken aback, Frost frowned slightly as his instincts told him to protect his masculine pride from the middle-aged man with a serious superiority complex. Jane willed him to hold back by placing her hand out and taking over the conversation.

“We’re sorry for even suggesting it then, aren’t we?” she said, hoping Frost would relax. Gratefully, Korsak came up and took Frost away from the cause of the tension now spreading in the air before they had even started the questioning process. The man smirked in amusement as the two men walked toward the seats nearest the stage, maintaining his focus upon the dancers still floating around the stage.

“Do not patronize me,” he ordered out like a tyrant before turning his head away from the stage to glare at Jane’s guarded appearance. “Miss Detective. You have no more understanding of what I have said than the black man I have offended.  The popular American idiom, ‘fake it until you make it,’ has no place in the precise world of ballet. If you don’t understand something, it would be best if you said so.”

His eyes turned back to the stage, leaving Jane feeling as if discussion was an unnecessary formality. But before she could regain her bruised confidence, the man had raised the megaphone to his lips in the direction of the stage.

“Stop the music, please,” he ordered, bringing the dancers to an immediate halt as they all stopped to look up at the man. “I feel like I’ve been watching two individual groups bump into and around each other as if the other group is not present. Yes, this is not an easy sequence but, right now, you all are making simple mistakes that are inexcusable. I have told all of you numerous times to not to get lazy with your working leg in the _pirouette_. At several different points in the rehearsal, I nearly felt obligated to end this run-through out of safety concerns. Dear god, some of you are wobbling around like children on their first day _en pointe_.”

His sigh of disappointment filled the space, causing each dancer to visibly lower their eyes in collective shame.

“I know this is your first time working on the stage together, but you can’t let nerves overwhelm you. Becoming a soloist or even a principal has nothing to do with being some sort of creative virtuoso. It is all about shining in a group, becoming a character completely. A soloist is no longer just a ballet dancer. She or he is the physical manifestation of the production. Right now, upon this stage, none of you are shining.” The man sighed for a second time, shaking his head in defeat. “Good first effort, everyone, but there is clearly room for improvement. Rebecca…your _chaînés_ are looking very well controlled. Given the speed of the _allegro_ , that is something to be proud of. We are done for today. Fifteen minute break and meet back in the practice hall at the school for small group work with Madame Alexandra.”

Sweat glistened from the dancers’ exposed arms as they bowed their heads in respect before separating into giggling groups of men and women. The girlish laughs and pre-pubescent high-pitched groans of frustration reminded Jane that many of the dancers were still closer to children in their age.

One small girl who was clearly shier than the rest grabbed Jane’s attention, her similarity to Maura catching the brunette off guard. Methodically, the blonde girl retrieved a pair of shocking pink and purple legwarmers with the name “Rebecca” written down the sides in gold thread. Before putting them on, she looked up at the man with a marvelous smile. Jane’s face released a smile in response, the girl’s joy infectious at receiving a compliment, but the man remained emotionally closed. Despite this lack of reaction, the small girl brightened at the man’s face even more as she left the stage like a deer.

“You must think this behavior between the dancers and myself,” he said, noticing the detective’s reactions at the exchange. “You must realize, some of these dancers come to the company as children and leave as adults. When I was in academy, I spent all day dancing and all night with my fellow students in the dormitories. This lasted from my ninth birthday to my signing to a company by the time I was eighteen. My birth parents were nothing to me. Every serious dancer experiences this loss, making them stronger as a result. It would be highly inappropriate for me to fulfill that absent role as father for them.”

“How can you say that?”

Bushy brows rose in confusion. “I release air into my vocal cords which create syllables processed by your ears as words. Why would you even ask that? Do they not teach basic physics in American schools?”

_Ass…_

“You know what, how about we just get to business before I do something I’ll regret? We need to talk to the artistic director about a dancer’s whereabouts. Do you know where we can find him or her?”

“Look no further than what is in front of your very own eyes. Yuri Grigorvich, artistic director for the Boston Ballet Company and former principal of the Mariinski.” Yuri replied, extending his hand in greeting. “And you, Miss? I’d feel more comfortable giving out information regarding my dancers if I knew who I was speaking to.”

Finally having a name to place with the face, Jane softened to Yuri’s seemingly genuine efforts to charm the detective with kindness. Sensing an opportunity, she pounced. “Jane Rizzoli, detective of the Boston Police Department. Now, what do you know about Alina Bobrova’s whereabouts in the last week?”

“Alina?” he asked, sighing heavily in annoyance. “Damn it… What did that difficult woman do now?”

“You don’t like her?”

“Alina is one of our most talented ballerinas on loan as part of an international exchange dancer program with several major countries, but she is particularly strong-willed and impetuous. She acts without thinking, Detective. However, her skill as a character artist is second-to-none to any of the other dancers on the company’s repertoire, one of the few reasons I put up with her temper tantrums,” Yuri complained. “Let me guess, she’s in jail for running some toddler over in a crosswalk while high on some illegal substance. I swear she does these things to spite me. I know you have to do you investigating thing, but could you tell me how much her bail is going to be? I’m sure her Russian financier will take care of the funding.”

Yuri’s face twitched in frustration. “Det. Rizzoli, please tell me why you are here asking me about Alina Bobrova. If she was in jail, you would have just called.”

“I’m sorry to have to inform you, Mr. Grigorvich but Alina Bobrova was found dead yesterday.” His barely recognizable cry of anguish gave Jane pause before she continued. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure she’ll be missed.”

“Damn right she’ll be missed. Mariinski will have my head when I tell them about Alina’s death.” Yuri exclaimed, clenching his fists. “They loved her much more than I ever could. They’re used to the kind of panache she exhibited. This is a tragedy… But the show must go on. Alina didn’t check in last night for individual instruction for her performance next week so I assumed that she was sleeping off another one of her hangovers. She always loves…loved to go to that club downtown. Alina always said it made her feel alive to dance there. You might want to check it out.”

Immediately, Jane’s head perked up. “What’s the name of the club?”

Yuri’s face crinkled as his mind flipped through the pages of memory stored in his mind. “The Rosefern. All of the new money types go there to stare at each other for no other reason besides that they have the leisure time to do so. Do you…need anything else?”

“No and thank you for your time, Mr. Grigorvich. Now if you don’t mind,” Jane said while motioning to Korsak and Frost, “I’m going to leave two of my detectives here to tie up some last things with you and talk to some of your other dancers.”

“I really don’t like the idea of having people traipsing around the school, Ms. Rizzoli. Dancers stem from a unique group of artistic individuals who are easily excited by the simplest of questions. Once they get flustered, it is next to impossible to calm them in a timely manner and I have little time for that sort of behavior. We have a week-long performance starting tonight for ‘Don Quixote.’”

The unexpected complaint made Jane turn back in mild amusement. The detective stepped towards the artistic director, her scorn towards the man finally unleashed.

 “This isn’t a negotiation. At the moment, I’m telling you what’s going to happen but I can get rude and just straight up make you do what I want by charging you with obstruction of justice. But then I’d have to go to my car, get the handcuffs, walk back, and then chase you because everyone always likes to think that cops are obese and can’t run much farther than a yard without giving up in exhaustion. Do I look like a fat, balding cop? Now, I’m sure you can understand the importance of allowing my detectives to do their jobs. I’d hate to have to tell my boss, who would then tell the feds, who would then tell the Russian Embassy that I couldn’t properly do my job because of a cocky, arrogant, pompous asshole who thinks his dancers are made of glass. God, that would suck for both of us, wouldn’t it?”

Yuri’s charm dissipated, revealing the cold man underneath the façade. His blue eyes darkened into a fierce shade of navy as his hard features tensed with the effort it took to restrain the fury running through his veins. Feeling slightly threatened by this sudden shift, Jane readied for an altercation with the retired dancer. To her relief, Korsak and Frost stepped up to protect her back and Yuri reluctantly backed down.

“Fine,” Yuri motioned for the men to follow him to the back-stage area of the opera house. “Follow me, gentlemen. We have about 250 dancers in our company, not to mention the permanent staff on call. This might take a bit of time. Have fun.”

Korsak followed, leaving Frost to look at his partner. “You sure about this, Jane? One of us could go with you to provide backup.”

“No, I need both of you guys on the director to make sure he doesn’t try to run on us or kill anyone else. Even if he isn’t the killer, I’d feel more comfortable having two people watching the other dancers than just one. If I need backup, I’ll give you a call,” she said with a smile before walking out, speed dialing Maura’s number.

Within three rings, Maura had answered calmly. “Isles.”

“It’s Jane. Uhh…you want to do something fun tonight?”

“Fun? As in watching Jeopardy fun?”

“More like doing a little undercover recon fun.”

Maura sighed. “I hate that kind of fun.”


	5. Chapter 5

Maura, upon hearing her plan, was remarkably more excited than Jane had thought possible given the fact that they were going to be throwing themselves in danger. If the killer was there, things could go south pretty quickly, but Maura was undeterred. For the blonde, this was a chance to spend some quality time with her girlfriend, nothing more.

When Jane had met her at her townhouse in order to change into something more acceptable, Maura explained that The Rosefern was an elite playground for the newly minted rich looking to show off their wealth in the most ostentatious ways.

Driving to the club in Maura’s Aston, Jane anxiously squirmed in the borrowed dress like a dog in a sweater. Maura turned the radio down, issuing a sigh of relief from the brunette. “Thank god and all that’s holy for turning that off. I felt like I was listening to the official NPR soundtrack, complete with endless hours of easy listening hits such as ‘Rain Blowing in Mountains’ and ‘Crisp Sunrise with Breeze.’”

“How can you say that?” Maura asked bewilderedly. “It’s bossa nova, a popular Brazilian fusion of jazz and samba. Maybe if you listened a little harder, you would have noticed the difference.”

A heavy sigh pounded from Jane’s lips as she slowly turned from the bright lights of the gentrified downtown Boston streets. “Sorry.”

“You should think about trademarking that word since you use it so often,” Maura muttered, driving the Aston down the dimly lit street. “So what’s the game-plan for tonight? You explained it to me earlier but you didn’t go into detail. We get into the club and then…”

“We stick together as I get a feel for the place and then I go and question the bartenders, see if they know anything about Alina. As much I would prefer you to stick to me like glue, I know how much you like to feel busy, so you can try to get some of the dancers to talk to you on an individual basis. You’ll have a better shot at chatting them up than I would since you belong to the blueblood crowd more than I do.” Jane said authoritatively, grabbing Maura’s clutch and taking out the blonde’s smartphone. “If everything goes fubar, call Frost or Korsak. They’ll be expecting either of us to call regardless if the shit hits the fan.”

As the car rolled to a stop next to an abandoned building, a nondescript valet knocked briskly on the passenger window. Maura’s body remained motionless, unable to decide whether to lower the window or wait until Jane gave her the okay. With a frown, Jane hoped that her girlfriend hadn’t been expecting the same kind of affair as the time they had trolled for a lesbian killer at a lezzie bar nearly a year ago. That operation had been sanctioned by the department. Tonight, they were essentially going undercover with no immediate backup or prior approval on the part of the brass. Korsak had checked off on it, but she knew his ass was on the line if, god forbid, the killer decided to show up. Honestly, the idea of losing her shield wasn’t as distressing as losing Maura because of her stupidity.

Another knock of the valet’s knuckles echoed, yet Maura continued to make no movement to lower the window. Looking over, Jane wondered what was going on in her mind.

_God, why did I let her do this? She’s only did one undercover op before and that involved her teasing lesbians with her amply displayed assets. Maura can’t handle this, she’s going to crack._

Just as she began to suggest calling it off, Maura lowered the window and gave the man the secret signal for entrance into the exclusive club.

“Are you scared?” Maura asked.

“Yes,” Jane replied confidently, “but I’ve done a lot more with far less. If you don’t want to do this, we can go in together and you wait in the car-”

“Absolutely not, Jane. I’m not a dog. If I sit in the car and wait for you, I’ll just go crazy worrying. Not to mention, you need me. We have to stay together because you are an outsider to these people. Just because _I_ enjoy your…frankness, doesn’t mean the feeling will be shared by others.” Maura extended her hand toward her girlfriend with a worried attempt at a smile. “I just want you to not get hurt. I could care less about plans and fubar. Your safety is my main priority and if that means I have to put myself in danger, then so be it.”

Jane blushed. “You’re such a romantic.”

“I know,” Maura smiled before opening the door, the sticky air of summer filling the air-conditioned car, “but so are you, when you want to be. It’s show-time. By the way, what’s fubar?”

_Leave it to Maura to not know what fubar means_.

Despite the large line of European pedigreed sports cars being ushered into the underground parking garage with big, burly men checking the ownership of each individual car as it swooped inside, Jane couldn’t see a similar line of people going into the entrance of the club. Well-dressed men and women exited from their cars like American royalty, threw their keys in the general direction of the valet, and walked right in. No one asked whether they belonged, but Jane could understand why there was no real need to. In a world where people have no problem shelling out 50k for monogrammed cashmere towels from Dubai, it wasn’t that hard to spot those that didn’t have the financial means to act similarly.

A couple gave Jane an odd look of revulsion before turning toward the blonde and relaxing slightly. The woman hanging off of her idiotic looking boyfriend delivered a miniscule look of acceptance, sauntering into the club’s entrance. Tapping on Maura’s shoulder, Jane got her attention. “What was that about? They just looked at me like I took their one chance to get adopted by Daddy Warbucks.”

“Like ‘Annie’? I used to love that movie when I was a child. Do you think it’s because I subconsciously related to the struggles of the character?” Maura whispered excitedly. Jane’s playful nudge returned the blonde’s focus back to the question. “That’s Jenna Watts and her latest model plaything. You know, of the Watts Family? Their great-great-grandfather revolutionized plastic surgery procedures.”

“Oh, well in that case, it must suck to be them,” Jane bantered sarcastically.  As they reached the lavish interior of the club, the detective stopped to take the room in for future reference.

Inconspicuous opaque glass walls that nearly reached the ceiling obscured the various areas of the club to those walking in from the front entrance, frustrating Jane because it reasserted to her already anxious brain the risks of going undercover with no backup or prior knowledge of the club’s layout. Muted pink and red shades of fluorescent lighting flooded the club, acting as homage to its namesake. For people used to constant help, the lack of staff to assist the rich in basic tasks was disconcerting to the detective. Despite Maura’s calling it a dance club, hardly anyone from her obscured vision was dancing. With the lack of music, Jane took it as a sign that the party had not officially started.

Jane continued to search the expanse of the club as she gave her jacket to the doorman who seemed slightly amazed to see a new face. Unexpectedly, Maura grasped her hand, taking her girlfriend away before she could respond. With several experienced turns throughout the confusing layout of the club, the couple ended up at an empty table near the bar.

Maura smiled at some of the occupants of the tables and was given several small smiles in return. “Everyone waits here until the walls fall.”

“Fall?” Jane frowned, gazing at all of the occupants nearby. “What does that mean?”

“All of these walls will be taken away, revealing the real performance,” Maura explained. “You know how I said this is a dance club?”

“And here it comes…”

“Well, it is a dance club…of sorts. If by ‘dance’ you mean the mating dance of the human sexual experience-”

Jane made a small sound of disbelief. “This is a _sex_ club?”

“Think of it as a simulated sex show. The dancers don’t actually have sex.”

“How many people are here, exactly?” Jane said, switching the line of conversation.

“I don’t know. They don’t exactly publish records of this sort of thing in the newspaper,” Maura stated, moving her hand out to caress Jane’s with her own. “If you don’t want to separate, I can stay.”

She shook her head as the eyes of the other patrons continued to appraise her connection to Maura. “No, I’m fine. The last thing we need to do is deviate from the plan, especially now. I’ll be fine, really.”

Despite the attention she was receiving, the brunette moved her hand on top of Maura’s to assure her that she was ready to go. “I’m going to chat the bartender up about the victim. If anything happens, I’ll call.”

Jane made her way toward the bar with a cocky strut, hoping her character wouldn’t be seen through too easily by the young bartender. He looked up with an obvious frown at the beautiful woman coming near him.

“Hey,” Jane said flirtatiously, her mind working overtime to get a cover-story together. “Do you have something stiff back there? My girlfriend is getting on my last nerves. She’s hardly paying any attention to me like I don’t even matter. Can you believe that? I mean, c’mon, if I can’t keep someone’s attention, I don’t know who can.”

The bartender smirked, turning his head to the crowd. “Who’s the mistress?”

“The blonde over in the corner looking like the cat that ate the canary,” she gestured in the general direction of Maura’s table, knowing that she would be there with a goofy smile on her face. “You can’t miss her. I didn’t even want to come to this stupid place, anyway. There’s way too much money floating around, in my opinion.”

“I feel your pain,” the bartender smiled. “How about a Beauty and the Beast?”

“A what?”

“Jager and tequila rose.”

Jane nodded, embarrassed at her lack of cocktail knowledge. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had ordered anything more complicated than a beer.

The bartender nodded approvingly before going through the motions to prepare her drink. He mixed the strawberry liqueur with the Jager with a careful hand, allowing the beautiful woman to see each step of the mixing process.

“One Beauty and the Beast,” the bartender said, pushing the finished drink over the marble counter. A grateful smile spread across Jane’s face as she went lifted the shot to her mouth, immediately taken aback by the strength of the concoction. He came back and she set the glass back down much harder than she intended, the clash sound of glass on glass harsh on her ears.

“Sorry, I’m just so frustrated with her right now.” Jane frowned, barely noticing the perimeter glass walls falling down slowly to reveal a smaller glass section of the club. “She said I could meet some dancer here tonight, but I don’t see her. Alina something or other…she’s Russian, I think.”

The bartender rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Alina. She drinks like a fucking fish, always sucking up all of the top-shelf stuff. And she doesn’t even pay half the time. If it wasn’t for her agreement with the owner to be a performer during these sex acts, I would seriously put her on a don’t serve list.” His hand travelled through his sandy locks before dropping his eyes back to Jane’s. “She’s been AWOL, though. I’m sure one of these rich types knows whose bed she’s been spending the night if you really want to meet her.”

“Who did you last see her with?”

The bartender grimaced at the woman’s sudden hard tone. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are you a cop? I don’t know…I remember seeing her two or three days ago, drinking vodka as usual and talking about her annoying dance director,” he said, cleaning Jane’s finished glass.

“Did she talk to anyone?” Noticing his apprehension, Jane quickly tried to return to character. “‘Cause my girlfriend is always talking about her like she’s the best thing since sliced bread. I want to make sure she isn’t cheating on me.”

“Well…she might have been talking to a guy who’d been hanging around the bar. He had to have the craziest eyes I’ve ever seen. It was like he was staring right through me or something,” he said with an obvious shudder of fear. “People that come through here are used to getting their way, but they aren’t all bad. That guy with Alina, though…he was different. It was like he had nothing to lose.”

Before she had a chance to question him further, a loud scream came from the revealed stage and soon came the stampede as the dignified men and women ran out of the club. Whatever was going on, it had everyone running scared. Jane dropped everything to find her girlfriend out of the chaos but the oncoming tide of bodies moving toward the exits swept the detective into the tide, leaving her with little ability to control her direction.

After playing with the tide, Jane finally got to a point in which she could brave the current of scared people. Digging out her badge from her clutch, Jane brandished it in front of everyone she passed. Everyone quickly made room for the undercover cop. Her eyes immediately spotted Maura on the stage, near two women who were absolutely still, too still to be just injured in the stampede. “Maura, you okay?”

Maura looked up, covered in blood. “The killer was here, Jane. Right here, all along. Look at the ceiling, the messages are back and the girls’ hearts are gone, just like Alina. But why two victims now? Why would a person kill two innocent people and put them on display like this?”

“I don’t know, honey,” she replied soothingly. “I just don’t know.”

“Why didn’t we save them? We could have saved them.”

Jane took Maura in an embrace, shielding her from the image of the bodies. “I’m sorry, Maura. We did the best we could do.”

\---

Maura’s shocked face haunted Jane’s consciousness throughout her compulsory efforts to secure the crime scene. As much as she wanted to make sure Maura was alright, there was no time. Between ensuring the remaining patrons from bailing to their expensive cars and trying to keep the crime scene from being contaminated from curious lookey-loos, her focus was already wearing thin.

After ordering the bartender to replace the mood lighting with something more substantial to the investigative process, Jane’s eyes drifted over her shoulder, watching Maura’s seemingly normal efforts to document the two dead women placed upon the stage. Her twitching fingers and shuddering shoulders were the only indication that something was amiss, given that her face was hidden behind golden waves of hair.

_Maura…I’m so sorry for getting you wrapped up in this._

Jane excused herself from another stalled conversation with a witness and walked to the stage. The two female victims displayed in the nude on stage gave the anxious detective a sense of déjà vu; their wrists and ankles showed evidence of black-and-blue bruising representative of being bound, eyes covered in a velvet blindfold, hair dyed burning red, and their hearts taken out in the same crudely efficient way as Alina. Heavy blood drops rained from the two messages displayed on the low ceiling, falling slowly upon the pale violated women before coagulating into dry brown puddles on the cold cement floor of the stage. All of the detectives were forced to wear heavy-duty decontamination suits in order to protect themselves from the blood. Maura had since stood up from the bloodied bodies with the same shocked face.

Jane coughed to announce her presence. “Frost and Korsak should be here in about fifteen minutes. Once they take over, I’ll drive you home and get you in bed.”

“No,” Maura said defiantly, her eyes erupting in fury.

“What…what’s wrong? I thought you’d want to go home after everything?” Jane asked. “You don’t need to be here, Maura. I’ve got it under control.”

“Yes, Jane, I _do_ need to be here. I’m the head medical examiner, first responder to the scene, and I’m covered in the victim’s blood. I can’t exactly go home and forget about everything when procedure needs to be followed.”

“Fuck that, Maura. This is too much for you to take.”

“Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean you can make decisions for me!”

A heavy silence developed between the two women. In frustration at her girlfriend’s pain and her inability to provide adequate relief, Jane ran her hands through her hair. “This isn’t your fault, Maura. If anything, I shouldn’t have let you come with me on this idiotic baiting expedition. I could have waited but I wasn’t patient. All I was thinking about was saving a life before the killer could strike again and not your safety. I know that I say this too often; but, I’m sorry.”

“I really wish you would stop saying that. Stop being sorry for once, Jane. I made the decision to go,” Maura said. “Instead of being sorry all the time, why don’t you think about your actions for once? Think before you speak.”

Looking over her shoulder, Jane quickly dragged Maura to the slightly concealed wings of the stage. “You need to calm down.”

“Calm down?” she angrily replied back, making an effort to whisper.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. If you don’t want to talk to me about it, that’s fine too. But don’t bite me because I care enough to try to help.”

Shadows danced in the dark from the bloody messages still dripping from the ceiling, ignored by the two quarreling women. In a split second, Maura’s anger snapped, leaving her slumped against the slim frame of her brooding girlfriend.

“I know that you care, Jane. It’s just…I feel like if I had been just a little bit faster, maybe they would have been alive. I’m a doctor, a physician. I made an oath to save those who need medical assistance. It makes me sick to know that I could have stopped this carnage.” Maura shuddered before turning away, the tears finally falling down her cheeks.

“Sweetie, you can’t do this to yourself.” Jane said, her voice wavering slightly as memories came back to her conscious. “It’ll lead you down a bad path. I was a patrol cop, wet behind the ears and looking to make a name for myself. On the radio, my partner and I got a call for back-up with a robbery suspect and, the stupid cocky kid that I was, ignored the call even though we were only a block away because he said that he had it under control. I had been looking to get fast-tracked for the detective’s exam so we went to an apartment of what we presumed was a rape victim. I knew that being a first responder to a rape case would give me some juice to work with and I needed all I could get, being a woman aiming for a detective’s shield. When we got up to the apartment, there was no one there besides a bunch of giggling kids who were prank-calling and wasting our time.”

Maura leaned back from Jane’s embrace, her eyes searching the brunette’s shadowed ones. “What happened to the police officer?”

“The suspect was armed with a concealed weapon and shot him before committing suicide.” Jane said before sighing heavily. “No one blamed me, which nearly killed me because I wanted the blame to be on me. Blame…gets rid of guilt. I started doing things to get rid of the guilt that I felt, things that I’m not proud of, Maura. Finally, my commanding officer told me that if I didn’t shape up and focus on the present, he’d discharge me from the force. I screwed up and nearly let guilt overwhelm my entire future but you…you didn’t make a mistake. These girls were already going to die, whether it was here or somewhere else. You did the best that you could do with the inevitable. That’s something to be proud of.”

“Oh, Jane…” Maura said with compassion, lifting her hands to caress the strong smooth lines of her girlfriend’s face. Jane’s response was lost as a loud assortment of noises came from the front of the club near the doorman’s post. The remaining patrons of the club who had chosen to stay jumped in excitement at the sight of crime scene techs and detectives rampaging through the club. Leading the charge, Frost and Korsak looked around earnestly for Jane.

“Jane?” Frost’s voice billowed into their ears, the moment between the two lovers ruined.

_Damn it, Frost. Great timing._

With a quick kiss on Maura’s cheek, Jane stepped out from the wings of the stage. “Frost? I’m on the stage. We’ve got two victims, both female with the same M.O. as the last victim, including the bloody messages. As much I hate to admit it, this is looking definitely like a serial.”

The two men walked toward the crime scene being hastily taped up by CSU. They took the large hats offered to protect them from the blood with a frown. In the corner of her eye, Jane noticed Maura walk from behind her, away from the bodies. Korsak lifted an eyebrow in confusion upon seeing the medical examiner, covered in blood, walking away from the scene, but Jane’s eyes told him to leave it alone.

“She’s probably going to go change her clothes,” Jane reasoned, watching Frost look up at the bloody messages on the wall with a look of disgust.

Korsak scratched his head bewilderedly, following the raining blood drops coming from the ceiling. “So what do we have here… **Star-crossed lovers meet upon a balcony, their fate sealed with the kiss of time. No matter the thousands of tales spun by the loyal third, nothing could retell this tale of woe and tragedy. Hope lost, melancholy gained.** Well, at least we know this guy is still committed to making  no sense.”

“It’s our job to make this make sense, Korsak,” Jane said while watching the crime scene techies hover about the crime scene. “There has to be a pattern, something we can manipulate to get the link between these murders and get this serial off the streets. C’mon, guys. Let’s think outside the box.”

Frost turned from the bloody messages, his eyes subconsciously moving in time with the ideas floating in his head. “We’ve got three murdered women with similar body types, dyed red hair, hearts taken out of their chests, bruised bodies, and bloody messages. I know you’re in love with this artistic director guy for this, but we were there all day, Jane.”

Jane ignored Frost, pacing up and down the small expanse of the stage. She knew there had to be something between these three victims that linked them together besides the obvious. Serials like this one were cocky, they didn’t think they could get caught and had no qualms about leaving evidence behind, making her job easier, but having excess evidence didn’t help if she had no idea how it connected to the big picture. Jane hated to admit it, but she was absolutely at a loss. There had to be something here...she could feel it in her bones.

Suddenly, a flash of creativity hit Jane’s overworked brain. “Wait…what was the last message written over the first victim, Alina Bobrova’s body, Frost?”

“ **The Beauty slumbers peacefully awaiting the kiss that will set her free amongst the Sin.** ” Frost read from his tablet. “Do you see something?”

“Yeah, but I may just be spinning my wheels. Maybe the messages aren’t independent from each other. This serial is trying to tell us something, literally.” Jane shook her head, nodding briefly at Maura’s barely noticed return. “The victims all relate back to the story he’s trying to tell.”

Maura, now clad in a pair of borrowed Boston Police Department coveralls used for evidence retrieval on clothing, looked at the pacing brunette with focused hazel eyes that had none of the weakness of earlier. “But Jane, everything in your theory hinges on what story he’s trying to tell. If the victims are connected by these messages, it’s vital that we focus on them instead of running around, trying to catch nonexistent leads.”

“But that could end up narrowing our focus too much, causing us to lose sight of what’s right in front of our faces, Maura. The more time we spend trying to figure out the meaning behind these messages could mean more deaths in the long-run. That’s the last thing we need for this case,” Korsak counterclaimed. “Our aim is to get this serial off the street, not understand his psyche and M.O. I say we focus on what we do know: the victims. The last thing Boston needs is another Boston Strangler scare.”

Frost looked from Maura to Korsak and back to Jane’s stoic demeanor, sensing the tension between the medical examiner and experienced detective. “Or we can do a little bit of both. Jane and I can focus on the messages and Korsak can interpret the victims. This doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario.”

Unaware of the others’ expectant looks, Jane stopped pacing as another realization hit her. “Oh my god, don’t you see? That whole beauty is slumbering thing coincides with the first victim and our new victims are lovers who shouldn’t be together…”

Frost frowned. “So…”

“The next victim is going to be the last.”

Maura shook her head. “That’s an assumption, Jane. You can’t be sure of that-”

“I don’t have time to use the scientific method to determine the validity of my hypothesis. What always happens to star-crossed lovers? They die, case closed. I know a little about Shakespeare to know that much. This killer isn’t going to keep killing until we figure him out. Once this guy is finished, he’s going to hop on a plane and be out of our jurisdiction, forever. We have to find something that we can use to get him while he’s still in our reach,” Jane commanded.

Jane’s phone vibrated in her clutch and with a hurried motion, she answered the call before it could ring twice. “Rizzoli. Yes…yes, I know, Lieutenant. No…yes, I can be right there. Twenty minutes, top, sir.”

Jane exhaled with pent-up frustration, looking at Korsak. “Thank you, Sgt. Korsak, for calling the brass on me. Now Cavanaugh is on my ass, saying he wants me in his office, yesterday. This day keeps getting better and better.”

Searching her pocket, Maura threw her keys in Jane’s general direction. “I’ll be a little bit longer with the bodies, so take my car. You’ll get there faster and I won’t have to worry about getting someone else to drive it back for me.”

“Man…can’t I catch a break?” Frost muttered, lowering his head in misery upon losing his chance to drive Maura’s Aston.

Jane rolled her eyes in response and raised a hand in thanks before walking briskly away from the crime scene. “While I’m getting chewed out by the brass, Frost and Korsak, I want you to look into these two women and see what you can find. Maura, do what you do best and ask the techies to put a rush on all of the evidence with these murders, including the first victim. I’m tired of working without something to back our theories up. Call me if anything breaks.”

With a heavy sigh, the group nodded and began to get to work. It was going to be another all-nighter for the homicide unit and the medical examiner.


	6. Chapter 6

Three knocks announced Jane’s presence at the door of Lt. Sean Cavanaugh and she walked in without hearing his reply. Whatever she did, her guilt was already predetermined. There would be no point in saying anything against that judgment given that hardly anyone went to Cavanaugh’s office unless he asked to see them beforehand. He was the head of the homicide unit, after all.

Cavanaugh stared at his detective’s figure-hugging black dress and matching stilettos and shook his head disapprovingly. “I’m going to assume your choice of dress has nothing to do with the fact that two new bodies were found at the ritzy place for the rich and famous, a couple of hours ago.”

“That would be a wise assumption, sir,” Jane said innocently, tugging the dress down in an attempt to gain some more length.

Cavanaugh looked back down at the half-finished report on his desk, forcing Jane to stare at her boss while ignoring the pinpricks of pain travelling through her toes. Her eyes rolled just as he set his pen down, returning his focus back on the frustrated detective. “Am I keeping you from something, Rizzoli?”

“Yes,” Jane replied. “I’m working a case and it’s really starting to get hot. I’d really like to get back to the team and help solve it.”

Cavanaugh frowned at her tone. “Rizzoli, I’m going to ignore your attitude as an unfortunate side-effect of being sleep-deprived,” he said, motioning the detective to take a seat in front of his desk. “Catch me up to speed on your current case. It’s so hard to get Korsak on the phone, as of late.”

Jane sighed heavily, her hands immediately going to rub her pained feet after sitting down in the uncomfortable straight-backed chair. “Three female victims with external bruising on the wrists and knees were found in two locations in the last two days. All have been physically altered post-mortem.”

“Altered?”

“Their hearts were taken, sir.”

Cavanaugh cringed. “Continue.”

“With each body found, messages have been found, as well. These messages seem to be connected in some way.”

“Anything from the lab yet?”

“Dr. Isles found that the first victim was poisoned with a lethal dosage of atropine. We don’t have anything else but I’ve asked Maura to rush the lab to get more evidence to work with. And…that’s about it, sir.”

“What about the Russian angle?” he asked with mild curiosity.

“Not a big deal,” Jane lied, hoping Cavanaugh wouldn’t persist.

“Really?” Cavanaugh frowned. “If that’s the case, why have I been contacted by my inside source with an early edition copy of Boston Daily that clearly says different?”

Cavanaugh threw a freshly printed edition of the Boston Daily at Jane’s face, barely managing to not hit her as her hands came up quickly to catch it. In bold, black font, the “Heartbreaker snatches yet another visiting Russian princess; authorities remain speechless as serial killer roams Boston streets” headline yelled out from the newspaper print in an obvious attempt to attract readers. Unbeknownst to the writers of this sensationalized drivel, Jane knew that this would do nothing but give the killer the attention that he craved while creating unnecessary panic. Panicky citizens made unreliable and unhelpful witnesses, leaving her and the prosecution high and dry with nothing to use to convince the jury that the killer was guilty.

Looking up, Jane frowned. “Sir, I don’t know what these reporters got their facts for this story since we just started putting things together a couple of hours ago, but I can assure you-”

“You can’t assure me anything until you get the murderer of these girls off the street, Rizzoli, so don’t try to play that with me. The Russian angle by itself is enough to get the staties involved, nonetheless the feds.” Cavanaugh sighed in exhaustion, glaring at the brunette. “Detective, this case is swiftly developing into a potential cluster for the department. Please, tell me you have this under control.”

Jane struggled to retain her poker-face despite her obvious state of exhaustion. “I have it under control, Lieutenant.”

“Really,” Cavanaugh deadpanned, challenging his subordinate.

“Yes,” Jane stated, returning his challenge with confidence. “I do.”

“Then what do you suggest our next action as department should be, Detective? Since you have this ‘under control,’ I’d figure you’d know best as the lead on this case.”

This was a big gamble but if there ever was a time to be brave, this was it.

Jane looked Cavanaugh in the eyes with a confident smile, hoping the confidence was being reflected in the rest of her body. “If the press wants to run a story, we’ll give them one. We can set up a press junket here at BPD, which allows the media to get the info they want while allowing us to control what that info is. They get off our back, the public is left assured, and BPD retains our standing in the community. It’s hardly an ideal situation, sir, but at this point, we’re hardly left with much other choice. They’re going to go ahead with the story, regardless of our actions.”

Going to the press was the last thing Jane had wanted to do with this sensitive case. Giving the serial killer attention would just increase his confidence but with this boost in confidence came an increase in time to work with. If the killer saw his actions being reported, he would feel validated, spending more time working out his next victim in order to bring more attention to his actions. All serials were alike. Their motivations might be different but their actions followed similar trends and patterns.

Cavanaugh’s answering chuckle surprised the detective, resisting the urge to congratulate her ego. “Either you’re getting smarter or you’re getting to know me far too well, but we finally agree on something without having to argue first. I’ll see you bright and early in your dress blues since the public have been in love with the Hero of BPD since she got shot last summer. If we can keep this case on low-profile, I can keep the state police out of the mix, which I know would make you very happy, Rizzoli. You can leave now.”

Nodding her head toward the Lieutenant, Jane rose from the chair and hobbled in pain out of his office.

\---

After getting out of her mandatory meeting with the brass, Jane called everyone together for a meeting in the operation room of the homicide unit. She managed to find a quick couple of seconds to change back into the only remaining clothes she had at the precinct – a pair of jeans and a white cotton t-shirt – in the bathroom before the cavalry arrived.

Korsak’s bland suit looked even more rumpled than normal, Frost had taken off his matching jacket, illustrating the wrinkled light purple button-down underneath, and Maura was visibly uncomfortable having the few detectives still on duty see her in the crime scene coveralls draping her figure. They were all running on fumes, but Jane needed them to work just a little longer to get this case solved.

_We’re near the end…just a little bit more, guys._

They all shuffled into the space to find Jane standing near the screen with an expectant look on her face, waiting for someone to report anything new. Frost spoke up first, ignoring the heavy sigh that plied itself from his mouth beforehand. “We had the techs do a fingerprint scan on the two victims. Hits came back on two temporary visas: Irina Dotsenko and Natalia Gerasimova. Both are here to dance from the Mariinski for the Boston Ballet, just like Alina Bobrova. They are both in their early twenties.”

Jane nodded, turning her gaze toward her tired girlfriend, softening her severity slightly. “Did we get anything back from CSU?”

“Yes and no,” Maura said slowly. “The blood results for the message written with the first victim came back positive to the victim. The killer used a mixture of linswax oil, commonly used in oil-based paint, to make sure the blood didn’t dry too quickly, presumably giving him enough time to both plan and write the message at the location. She also had a fairly high blood alcohol level for a woman of her size but, given her like to party, that may just be circumstantial. I just finished the autopsy for the two new victims and given CSU the bodily samples, but I wouldn’t expect anything back from them for a while, even with the rush I placed on the results. They had an officer involved shooting at Charlestown last night.”

“You did great, Maura. I can’t expect you to perform miracles at such a late hour.” Jane comforted the blonde with an attempt at a bright smile. “We might have a slight snag. The press has caught wind of our case.”

Jane walked over to hand the newspaper to Korsak. “Despite Korsak being the Sergeant on this case, I have to play nice with the press in the morning.”

“Is that wise given you have a tendency to…get angry,” Korsak said.

Cavanaugh furrowed his eyebrows. “Non-negotiable, Sargeant.”

“Listen, I know we’re all tired, but we need to find something to feed the press in order to reassure the public that ‘The Heartbreaker’ isn’t a big deal. If I go in there with what we’ve got now, it’s going to look like BPD is incompetent.”

In unison, all three of her friends groaned in response to the news and the incendiary headline.

“Okay,” Jane cleared her throat, reluctantly refocusing on the two detectives in the room. “What if we spin this to the press: young women connected to the Boston Ballet have been found murdered in conjunction with what we believe to be a series of connected events. We believe these events to not be indicative of a serial murderer.”

“Lying to the press usually doesn’t end well for both parties,” Korsak stated knowingly.

Jane nodded, walking toward the three of them. “Trust me, I know, but I’d rather risk lying to increase our chances of catching this guy over telling people the reassuring message of: ‘Yeah, we’ve got a serial killer on the loose who has a thing for pretty ballerinas. But, don’t panic, it’s just _Russian_ ballerinas…we think. Honestly, we’re pretty much in the dark with this one, as well. Don’t panic, though.’”

“What about the connection with the Boston Ballet?” Frost asked. “You like the artistic director for this, Jane. Why not tell the public that we have a potential person of interest, let the community put pressure on him, and get an opening when he makes a mistake trying to prove his innocence?”

“I don’t want to be the rain on the parade,” Maura chimed in, looking over at Jane briefly before looking over at the rest of the detectives, “but we don’t have much conclusive evidence to go after this artistic director. Everything we have is circumstantial, at best. The only thing we really have is the atropine and that could have come from anywhere. Even without a prescription, it’s not that difficult to import the drug from Canadian distributors.”

Jane leaned against the desk nearest Korsak, tension forming on her chiseled facial features. “Which puts us back to square one,” she said, hands running through her hair before being caught on knots of tangled loose curls. As much as she hated to admit it, this case was making her crazy.

Another heavy sigh came from everyone, causing Jane to shake her head. “Let’s all take a breather and come back in the morning. We’re not getting anything done when we’re this tired. I’ll call Korsak before the press conference to touch base.”

Korsak and Frost rushed to head out to the small assortment of cots used for detectives who couldn’t or wouldn’t go home in the middle of a case, leaving Jane and Maura alone together for the first time since the incident at the club.

“You okay?” Jane asked quietly.

“I’m more worried about you. Can you handle all of this…pressure?”

Jane shrugged. “I can handle it.”

The two women gaze into each other’s eyes, ignoring the muted sounds of the few remaining detectives still on duty for the night shift.

“Maura?”

“Yes, Jane?”

“Can I spend the night in your office again?”

Maura smiled. “Only if I stay with you.”

“Have you seen your couch? There’s like no room for the two of us to sleep together.”

“With my intellect and your…problem-solving abilities, I’m sure we can figure something out,” Maura replied, taking the detective by the hand to the elevator.


	7. Chapter 7

Jane stood in front of the mirror, checking out her appearance for the press conference. Maura had gratefully picked up her dress blues from her apartment while her Ma’ had handled breakfast duty with a chocolate chip muffin and a cup of coffee. Her miserable looking reflection stared back at her as Jane suddenly felt a small folded note of good-luck written on expensive stationary paper in her jacket pocket. Written in Maura’s curlicue cursive, Jane’s eyes looked over it briefly, bringing a smile of amusement to her face. With a shot of energy, she grabbed the remnants of muffin and coffee along with her wrinkled mass of clothes off the restroom counter. It always marveled Jane how Maura could manage to care so much.

Unexpectedly, another detective from Vice walked in to the restroom, heading toward the standing urinals near where Jane was standing, disgust soon taking the place of the love she felt toward her girlfriend’s actions. “Umm, excuse me. Female detective standing right here.”

The young detective turned around from his task of unzipping his fly. “Hey, c’mon, Rizzoli. The men’s bathroom downstairs is closed, making this one the only one available.”

“Jesus…can’t you hold it?” Jane asked with a slight growl, glaring at the detective as the sound of piss hitting the urinal echoed through the restroom. “Or, here’s a great idea, go into a fucking stall?”

“Aren’t we all brothers in arms, Rizzoli? Together we stand united and all of that mumbo-jumbo they spit out on the recruiting pamphlets? Brothers should have no problems with seeing their family relieve themselves. Give me a break. Just turn that pretty head of yours around if it offends you so much,” he said with an obvious Saskatchewan accent, winking slightly before taking in Jane’s dress uniform. “Uh-oh, looks like you’re the lucky pig being led to slaughter.”

“What?” Jane asked, cringing at the sight of her fellow detective shaking his member for any last remnants of urine.

“Press duty, grasshopper. All those reporters must be camping out upstairs for you and your little Heartbreaker case. Good-luck, kiddo.”

“You Vice guys are just full of good manners, aren’t you? Thanks for the luck, by the way.”

“No problem, Brother Rizzoli.”

With a casual wave, Jane left the bathroom to be immediately accosted with small nods of good-luck from the homicide detectives who had come in early to watch the press conference together and give Jane some much needed support. If the press conference went well, the killer would be recognized for his actions, thus inclining him to hopefully spend a little bit more time planning for the next victim. With more time came an increased chance for the team to catch him before he could strike again.

However, in the worst case scenario, Jane’s gamble would end up making the killer far more confident in his abilities, resulting in even less time to solve the case before the final murder. As much as she wanted nothing more to spend the day processing their evidence, she understood the importance to play the game with a serial killer. All serial killers wanted was attention and Jane had every attention to give it to this sick bastard in order to save a woman from being murdered.

Setting down her wrinkled clothes, Jane headed toward the elevator in order to reach the conference room used for official press events on the fifth floor. As the elevator began the slow ascent, Jane took out her phone to call Korsak. Before the second ring could sound on her end, he picked up with brightness to his voice that surprised the detective.

“You sound awful cheery for only getting seven hours sleep,” she mocked playfully, knowing he was just as exhausted as she was. They had been running on all cylinders for three days now. The homicide department might be good but they weren’t invincible.

“Actually it was closer to six,” Korsak replied, “since me and Frost stayed up a little longer after we all left operations.”

Korsak released a slight laugh. “You alright? Working with the press is like going to the dentist. Last thing I want is to have to investigate the murder of several reporters.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, just looking to get this over and done with.” Jane said. “I got to go. We’ll talk later. Keep following up with the case while I’m appealing to the press.”

“Good-luck, Jane. You’ll knock ‘em dead.”

“Thanks,” she smiled, hanging up on her end just as the elevator dinged twice to announce her arrival on the fifth floor. With confident steps, Jane readied her mind for a busy half-hour with the bane of her existence aka the press. Lt. Cavanaugh stood near the side of the small makeshift stage, waiting for his subordinate to approach in order to address the room filled with anxious reporters and news outlet representatives. Also dressed to impress in his dress blues, Cavanaugh’s medals and regalia gleamed in the artificial lights of the conference room.

“You get some sleep?” he asked dismissively, hardly expecting an answer as his eyes swept the large crowd.

“Enough.”

“Good,” Cavanaugh replied, turning his head to appraise the detective’s appearance, “you’re going to need it. I suggested to the deputy chief to mostly invite local media outlets to this circus, but he’s clearly decided to ignore my suggestion. Apparently, he thought the idea of a female homicide detective addressing public concerns toward the possibility of a serial killer on Boston streets to the national media gave a better PR slant. You ready?”

Jane turned away from the Lieutenant, taking out the small note that Maura had written her. Her positive words giving the brunette another surge of confidence: **You’ll be great today. No one can stop my Jeddy-Bear when she’s on a roll. P.S. – I know you said not to use your nick-name, but it’s just so cute, I can’t help myself.**

Leave it to Maura to know exactly what to say, no matter how idiotic it came out.

Putting the note back in her pocket, Jane turned back to the Loo with a nervous smile. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Now, let’s get this charade out of the way so I can get back to catching this guy.”

***

Sandy hair bobbed in time with the music that came from his expensive computer. He types quickly with self-assured elegant fingers. The classical rhythms of Claude Debussy’s third movement of Suite Bergamasque, “Clair de Lune”, travel on the air of the office, bringing a smile to his sculpted features. As the music swept into his soul, his eyes close, memories taking his focus away from his work.

During the endless days of learning, practicing, and memorizing of being a student at the Vaganova Academy, he had to give everything up. Nothing could compare to the excitement of learning he was chosen to be a potential object of pride for his fellow countrymen, made even better by his sister’s acceptance, as well. Throughout their childhood, the two siblings were similar in their looks, personalities, and desires. This hardly changed upon their admittance to the Academy.

At first, they were inseparable, in spirit and in skill. Because of their unique rapport, Matryona was frequently partnered with him to perform pas de deux which became their trademark. Before they had even graduated, several companies had competed for their talents, but Mariinski, the star achievement to a Russian dancer, won in the end. Rising through the ranks with a level of speed that was unheard of at their age, Matryona and her brother were soloists within two years of joining the ballet company. People from all over the world came to see the two of them perform in the repertoire that made them famous: “Ondine,” “Cinderella,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Scheherazade,” and even “Swan Lake,” to name just a few. Very rarely did they dance separately…until Matryona began wanting to explore more opportunities abroad in order to further her skill. He had refused, seeing no reason to explore and his sister refused to stay, claiming boredom.

That was the last time he saw his sister as he wanted to remember her, stubborn and determined. In her absence, his dancing still retained the pure precision that he was known for but it lacked the brilliance that had developed when he and his sister performed together. Matryona was the fire to his icy focus on technique; without her, he was just good but not great.

As his requests for solo performances dwindled, he was demoted to the corps, the lowest rank for a dancer in the company, while his sister continued to increase her renown across the world. Jealousy overwhelmed him upon seeing his sister, whose skill had always been inferior, surpass him. Frustration at his own inability to succeed evolved into overwhelming hate at the woman he had once loved like his own reflection.

It hardly helped his miserable mood to receive ceaseless letters from Matryona about a female contemporary soloist she had become smitten with. Every letter began with “Ekaterina” and ended with “Isn’t Ekaterina just marvelous?” as if the woman was Aphrodite incarnate. When his sister was awarded the honorary title of prima ballerina absoluta, Matryona’s only response was that Ekaterina thought the title an anachronism in the modern dance world. Even now with the passage of time, his bushy eyebrows lowered in annoyance at this complete lack of respect. She wasn’t only better than him, but she also had to fall in love with a woman with little respect for tradition?

But this all was irrelevant after hearing that his dear sister was sick and unable to dance. The next time he saw his sister, three years after she left, was in quarantine after being shipped back to Russia to die like a sick animal. It was all because of that damn temptress Ekaterina. When Matryona died, Ekaterina was conspicuously not present. He had to deal with his parents’ inane questions and the doctors who seemed more in awe of being in the presence of a prima absoluta over healing her, alone.

Debussy’s calming tones change into the mood appropriate sounds of “Adagio for Strings.” His blue eyes close as they well with the same tears that always came, despite the passing years since his sister’s death. The days following both her private and state funeral were nothing but a blur of depression-induced haze.

Nothing mattered after her death. He quit dancing completely, cut off ties with his family, and left Russia to work as an assistant choreographer for a small American ballet company that his sister had once attended. The only reason he took the job was because it represented a way to keep some kind of connection to his sister alive. As his involvement in American ballet companies increased, the depression that had weighed over his existence eased somewhat. For the first time since the death of his sister, he had the focus to see where the blame lay concerning Matryona. Ekaterina and everything she represented caused his sister’s untimely death.

The song ends, leaving silence to accompany the man as his furious typing continues. His mesmerizing eyes reopen reluctantly, slowly taking in his unchanged office and the television near his desk. Rarely used except to watch performances of potential dancers, the television was just as expensive as his television at home. Grabbing the remote, he turned it on and changed the station to a press conference featuring the same detective that came by earlier. What was her name…June Ravoli? No, that wasn’t it, but it hardly mattered. She wouldn’t catch him and even if she did, it hardly mattered. Those last two girls were nothing more than his final transition into the coda, his final act toward getting his final revenge for Matryona. After he was complete, he neither needed nor wanted any sort of recognition for his actions. He would have Matryona’s eternal love and gratitude.

Swiping elegant fingers through perpetually messy locks, he grabs his phone and dials a number that he knew far too well. She would be expecting his call. He had spent months building a rapport with the woman and, surprisingly, she remained oblivious. She’d soon know.

“Ekaterina,” he says invitingly, his eyes darkening as his unoccupied hand plays with his hair. “It’s Yuri. I was wondering if you would like to get lunch before your practice for ‘Don Quixote’ tonight.”

A small voice answers on the other end of the line.

“That restaurant we went to last time? It’s not far. In fact, let me take you to my place, instead. It’s closer and I have to be the only man in Boston that knows what proper vodka tastes like, not this watered swill they call vodka in America…yes, I know where that is. I am on my way out of the office, right now.”

Detective Jane Rizzoli’s face stares attractively out at Yuri’s relaxed body as if taunting him to continue. He ignores her meaningless taunt, turning off the television for one last time. Even if he wanted to stop, there was no time. Matryona was waiting for them.


	8. Chapter 8

After facing the demanding questions of the press and their cameras, Jane waited for the elevator to take her back down to the homicide unit. She had thought the experience would be even more exhausting than the crime-solving process yet the excitement of answering the reporters recharged her batteries. Despite the bright lights and the pressure of being put on display for the public, Jane felt as if she handled the situation appropriately.

Each lighted number of the various floors slowly passed with no hurry, ignoring the anxious detective bouncing on the balls of her feet. The dinging of lowering floors brought Jane back to her main priority, getting this serial killer off the streets. During the junket, she had purposefully left out some details to the public but it was a necessary risk. A final ding of arrival echoed through the small space. Jane slipped through the doors before they could even open fully, focused on returning back to the case.

Before she could return back to her desk unnoticed, Korsak and Frost stepped into Jane’s path with proud smiles. “Well, who knew Jane was so photogenic, Frost? For someone who hates wearing her dress blues, she looks awfully nice in them,” Korsak joked.

Frost, sensing the playful mood coming from Korsak, followed suit with the ribbing, eyebrows rising in mock surprise. “I totally agree. Maybe she’d look into making a career change? It’d be big news to have a homicide detective turn into a model…like America’s Next Top Model!”

Rolling their eyes, Jane and Korsak walk off toward their desks, leaving Frost baffled. “C’mon,” he pleaded, breaking off slightly as the other detectives in the squad room stared at him with a chuckle. “It was a joke… I mean, not like a joke regarding your attractiveness, but like that you’d be a model. Not to say that you couldn’t be a model, though. You know what I mean, right?”

“No,” Jane deadpanned, turning back to give her partner an icy stare, “I don’t. Please tell me we have something new with this case. Actually, anything remotely helpful would bring a smile to my face.”

As Jane got back to her desk, Cavanaugh came out from his office to address the entire squad. In response to his sudden appearance, her mind quickly processed all of the potential reasons why the Lieutenant would decide to show his face. Motioning toward Korsak, she took off the dress jacket and slung it across her chair, turning back to her boss.

“The deputy chief asked me to congratulate the homicide unit and, in particular, Det. Jane Rizzoli for showcasing the department to the public in a dignified manner,” Cavanaugh said. “But the state police feel as if it would be in their best interest to get involved in this case. And before _some of you_ get on my back, I tried to go to bat for our ability to handle our own problems in Homicide, but the staties have more influence with these types of cases.”

Jane groaned. “This is my case, sir.”

“I know that, detective. Trust me, I know,” he said, voice rising in response to Jane’s tone. “That’s why I requested that my unit have another couple of days to work this case. They promised me they would remain hands-off, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up having differing definitions of how many days constitute a couple. While we have this case in our hands, I want everyone working this case as priority one, no exceptions. My experience working with the staties tells me that they’ll ignore their promise if they sense an opportunity to take the glory. Jane, you’re still running point on this case. I want this guy off the streets, preferably with _my_ men taking him in. Get to work.”

With little fanfare, Cavanaugh left the homicide detectives to return back to his office. Jane watched him go, feeling a level of respect for her Lieutenant that surprised her. She’d been through her share of commanders, both good and bad, but he was one of the first to actually respect her decisions. Not only had Cavanaugh allowed her to be lead on this case since the beginning but, even now, he was endorsing her continued efforts to work it until the staties got involved.

Jane ran her hand through her hair. “Alright, we don’t have much time on our hands so we’re going to have to push hard. We think the killer will have one more death based off of the messages he leaves at the scenes in the victims’ blood. Based off the previous victims’ timelines, that gives us about twenty-four hours to find some kind of connection to nail our suspect,” Jane commanded, taking a brief breath before continuing. “Korsak, bring everyone up to speed on this case. Frost, start looking at those messages. I’m going to change back into some normal clothes and check up on CSU to determine where they are with our evidence.”

“You’re going to harass the techies again, aren’t you?” Frost asked, smiling.

“I find that it makes them work faster,” Jane said, grabbing her clothes from last night off her desk. “Call me if something breaks.”

***

After taking a couple of minutes to change back into dirty clothes, the harried detective moved with long strides toward the lab, hoping to pressure them into rushing their evidence from last night. Even though she remembered Maura saying something about an officer involved shooting that had taken the techies attention, Jane had the Lieutenant on her side.

As Jane picked up speed around the corner, Maura walked out of her office, colliding directly into the detective’s path. With a yell of frustration, she stopped in her tracks. “What are you doing?”

“I work here?” the chief medical examiner asked quizzically. “Should I be somewhere else? I guess I could set up an office in the elevator since that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time lately, but I don’t think that would be very conducive to thorough autopsy results.”

“Maura…” Jane growled. “You know what I mean. Why aren’t you autopsying or trying to find a lead in this case? I’ve been working my ass of trying to find a way to get this guy and you’re just walking around? C’mon, are you serious?”

Maura’s body tensed, hands coming across her chest as she returned Jane’s frustration. “Do you honestly think I’m just sitting around, staring at the walls, and not trying to help out? I want this serial off the streets just as much as you do and I’ve been working just as hard as you to find something to connect this guy back to the artistic director. Sometimes I don’t think you realize how much your actions hurt me.”

Suddenly, a group of CSU techies came out from across the hallway, laughing happily about something or other, ignoring the two women as they got onto the elevator.

“I’m sorry, for everything,” Jane muttered. “And I know that sorry doesn’t mean much when I’ve said it as much as I have but I genuinely mean it. And…thanks for the note this morning. I really needed it. Just…as much as I need you.” Jane calmed her nerves with a deep sigh. “So…why are you coming out of your office?”

“Umm…” Maura mumbled, clearly shocked by Jane’s admission. “CSU finished analyzing the evidence from the two victims from last night. By the way, nearly all of my techs hate me. They hate being rushed and I can’t blame them-”

“Tell them I’ll take them all out to Fenway for the next Red Sox game,” Jane interrupted. “What do you got?”

Beckoning the detective into her office, Maura returned back to her office and Jane followed right behind her girlfriend’s heels. Jane sat across from the blonde on her couch near the window facing the hallway. As anxious as she was to keep busy with the serial case, the detective was glad to see Maura, regardless of what the circumstances were of the meeting.

Maura opened the folder in her hand, taking her black heels off to sit cross-legged in the lotus position. “The bodies found the same level of concentration of atropine in each of the two victims. Their BAC was extremely high. I highly doubt that these women could have gotten away from their killer, Jane. Whether they were forced to drink this much or did it of their own volition, the victims would have been extremely truncated in their ability to defend themselves.”

“So the victims were presumably wined and dined by the serial killer first and then taken somewhere where the killer felt comfortable enough to take his time with each of the women,” Jane contemplated, putting together the practical elements of Maura’s theoretical connection, “anything else?”

Maura nodded, flipping to another page in the folder. “As you know, all of the victims were dancers with connections to Boston Ballet. Well, I was looking at some of the pictures of the messages written over the bodies at the two crime scenes and you know what I figured out?”

Jane leaned in expectantly, their arms briefly touching, eliciting a barely audible sigh of pleasure from the two women. “Please, don’t make me guess, honey.”

“All of the victims, according to the records I got of their official website and my own knowledge of the company, are principals of the company, Jane. The messages on the walls next to the victims are all references to specific ballet productions. The first victim, Alina Bobrova, had the message: **The Beauty slumbers peacefully awaiting the kiss that will set her free amongst the Sin,** referencing the events of ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ The last two victims, Irina Dotsenko and Natalia Gerasimova, had the messages: **Star-crossed lovers meet upon a balcony, their fate sealed with the kiss of time. No matter the thousands of tales spun by the loyal third, nothing could retell this tale of woe and tragedy. Hope lost, melancholy gained,** which is also a direct reference to the events of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Scheherazade.’  Don’t you see the connection?” Maura asked, grabbing her girlfriend excitedly by the arm. “Whoever the killer is, he has to work inside the company with extensive background knowledge of ballet. ‘Scheherazade’ hasn’t been performed by Boston Ballet in years so, I did some digging, and I found out that the only company that has 'Scheherazade' in their current repertoire is Mariinski, a ballet company in Russia. There’s only one person, according to their roster, who has the knowledge and credentials to be able to get a principal to leave the stage for something trivial like getting a drink, Jane. Principals are extremely busy. Their entire lives revolve around the stage. When I was dancing, there were days when I didn’t even see the sun. I highly doubt that any of our victims would have left the stage for a casual drink with just some random person off the street.”

A moment passed as Maura caught her breath while Jane put together the connection that the medical examiner established in her head, making sure each fact fit correctly in the blonde’s theory. “Who was it, Maura? Who was the only person who matched up?”

She looked down at the forgotten folder that had fallen between them in her excitement. “Yuri Grigorvich, the artistic director of the company who you’ve liked for these murders. Jane, he has access to any dancer he wants and they would all readily do anything he asks them to. An artistic director of a ballet company is like the father of the entire group. Everyone strives to impress the artistic director because he is the one who can make or break a dancer’s career. I hate to assume but he has to be the killer. It’s the only thing that logically makes sense based off the evidence.” Maura said, taking a breath before gripping onto Jane’s arm tighter. “Did I help?”

For the first time in days, a bright smile of pure joy crossed the brunette’s face. A similar smile mirrored itself upon her girlfriend’s face in response.

“And you’re all mine, Jane,” she whispered, reading the detective’s mind.

“How do you that?” she asked, inching ever closer to the relaxed medical examiner. “It’s like you can read my mind…and I don’t know if I like that.”

Maura laughed, uncoiling her legs from their position before moving subconsciously toward the inviting lips of the detective. “I don’t think you have much choice in the matter, Jeddy-Bear. Love changes people…makes them more open for interpretation, especially by the one they love.”

“Mmm...You might be right, Maubie, because you are coming in loud and clear,” Jane whispered before her words broke off in sweet surrender to Maura’s soft lips upon hers, igniting flames that had been carefully held in check. As the surprise of being seduced by her normally more submissive girlfriend wore off, it was replaced with the growing acceptance of Maura’s sudden dominant side, helped by the sensation of her tongue asking for admittance into her closed mouth.

Before Jane could allow the eager blonde inside, her hands searched for more connection to the hardened flesh that she knew was underneath the expensive layers of fabric. Unhurried acceptance met with unhurried searching; the importance of time ignored with the growing importance of satisfying a need that had been festering since their spat on Monday. The preoccupied detective noticed as Maura pushed her down onto the couch that they were perilously exposed. The blinds were still open, the door was unlocked, and the door leading into the darkened autopsy room was even more wide open to anyone who happened to want to talk to the chief medical examiner. A door from the CSU office opened and closed, fear shooting a near lethal dosage into her veins, but all that was forgotten as Jane’s shaking hands, frustrated at the slim access to the skin she so desperately craved, looked earnestly for another opening and finding it on the blonde’s toned ex-dancer legs.

A surprised groan of delight came from Maura’s lungs as Jane furiously clawed for an opening in the barrier separating the eager brunette from her main goal, at the moment. With an annoyed growl, Jane stopped her search, broke the live connection between their lips and looked up at her girlfriend.

“Maura…stop,” she moaned, the sensation of the blonde’s weight upon her lower extremities making it difficult to focus.

Maura shook her head out of the fog of lust that had descended over the both of them before, finally moving away from the blushing detective with obvious embarrassment.

“I…I don’t know what came over me. I just,” her voice cracked as she moved away from the still detective, her eyes lowered, “needed you so badly that I couldn’t think straight. It was like I took some kind of a hallucinogenic drug. I don’t understand how I can hate you so much one minute and want nothing more than your body the next. This feeling…defies all of my previous experience with men, Jane. I…don’t know how to deal with this.”

Jane moved toward Maura’s crumpled frame, massaging the blonde with slow circles on her back. The blonde’s eyes remained glued to the floor despite her efforts, confusion setting in as Jane moved away from the withdrawn woman.

As much as she wanted to stay to comfort her, Jane knew that she had spent too much time away from her current goal of getting Yuri off the streets before he killed again. “Hey, it’s alright, honey. It’s natural for you to react like that, you’re my,” she said before her throat closed, “girlfriend. God, it’s still really weird to say that.”

“I like it when you say it,” the blonde whispered, licking her lips subconsciously, issuing a purr from the enthralled brunette. “You’re my girlfriend. I’m your girlfriend. It’s almost like after all those months, we’re actually official. If all goes well, we’re having dinner at my place, to celebrate.”

Jane’s mind struggled to form a logical sentence even with Maura’s heated gaze burning through her lame attempts to remain focused on anything but her presence. “What about…my mother?”

“We’ll lock her in the guesthouse with food and water, tell her to watch Bass or something.” Maura said with a playful wink.

Jane laughed nervously, standing up, rushing toward the elevator and away from the potential negative influence that was Maura Isles in a lustful mood. Her fingers pushed the down button with more force than was necessary, feeling her girlfriend’s eyes on her with each passing second. Wanting nothing more than to turn around and determine if her girlfriend was checking her out, Jane ignored the impulse, gladly running into the open door of the elevator as it binged its arrival to the entire floor.

Silence covered the space as the elevator began slowly crawling up the various floors of BPD. The detective whisked away the sweat forming on her brow before calling her partner’s cell, excitement obvious. “Frost, get everyone together, including Cavanaugh. We got him dead to rights.”


	9. Chapter 9

For the first time in this case, Jane and her fellow detectives had a genuine suspect along with an understanding of the murders. Three Russian dancers visiting Boston Ballet were killed in a ritualistic manner over the course of the last couple of days. The only logical suspect had to be someone involved with the company who garnered respect; the only person who fit that bill was Yuri Grigorvich, the artistic director of Boston Ballet. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence that could be accepted in court, the Lieutenant had agreed to allow Jane to move forward and take Yuri into custody upon hearing the long-awaited connection between the victims and the bloody messages written on the walls. He wasn’t happy about the lack of evidence but, in a case like this one where time was of the essence, Cavanaugh was willing to forego in exchange for not missing an opportunity to catch a potential killer. To Jane, however, their lack of evidence was hardly a problem. That’s what interrogation is for, getting a confession when the evidence is circumstantial, at best.

With the rest of her team, Jane had hastily put together a retrieval plan of the suspect. Her mother had gladly dropped off another suit for her to change into, taking her wrinkled clothes, the ruined dress Maura had lent her, and her dress blues. Outfitted in her second skin, Jane began to get started. After calling his assistant, it was determined that Yuri had left several hours ago to have lunch. The assistant was unsure of where exactly the man had gone or could be located, but Jane used her experience as a homicide detective to conclude that Yuri was probably at his apartment, holed up with another victim.

Ignoring the idiotic ramblings of the nervous assistant, Jane commanded the young man to tell her where the apartment was. After discovering that it was near both the school and Opera House, the team took a brief couple of minutes to formulate a plan to secure the main entrance of the building and prepare for Yuri Grigorvich’s capture. Jane, Korsak, and Frost would take the point while the other detectives would flank the building, making sure the artistic director had no probable escape route. Checking her belt for her trusty Glock, gold shield, radio, and handcuffs; Jane signaled to begin the operation.

Yuri Grigorvich’s condo was a penthouse suite; the only one occupied on the top floor. In order to not create unnecessary suspicion, the three detectives entered the condo complex separately, agreeing to meet up on the top floor together. Jane’s entrance was unwatched, the doorman’s station left unoccupied as she waited for the elevator to reach the bottom floor. Her brown eyes remained alert, searching the empty space for the slightest hint of potential threats. A whoosh of air announced the arrival of the elevator and Jane walked into the small confined space confidently; pushing the top floor button before a young man in running gear caught the elevator before the doors could close fully. Jane evaluated his presence, covering the tools of her trade with her suit jacket.

“Floor?” Jane asked distractedly.

The gasping man lifted five fingers weakly and Jane nodded, pushing the small button for the fifth floor. The elevator began to rise upward, leaving her with nothing to do but try to remain oblivious to the sputtering man next to her who looked near death.

Before she could stop, however, Jane’s cop instincts kicked in, causing her to look over at the man with slight concern. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he sputtered, gathering himself to his full height, looking over at the detective for the first time. “I’m training for the Boston Marathon. I don’t normally do marathons but my girlfriend loves it. She says it’ll be good for our relationship to experience the pain together.”

Jane chuckled at the sudden memories of Maura’s successful attempt to do the same thing with her last year. “It’s not that bad.”

The elevator was now nearing the fifth floor, preparing to stop. “Your boyfriend likes to run too? Are you two running this year? Can you believe they changed the course again so now the runners have to go over Heartbreak Hill twice? I can barely get over it once, nonetheless, twice.”

“No,” she said nonchalantly as the elevator opened, allowing the man to step out before looking back at the brunette, “my girlfriend and I aren’t probably going to run this year, but after what happened last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if she demanded our participation. Hopefully not, though. I can’t stand running.”

The door closed shut, his reply lost as Jane’s mind refocused back to Yuri Grigorvich. Several seconds passed and finally, the elevator reached the penthouse floor with another whoosh of released air. Near the door at the end of the lighted hallway, Korsak and Frost waited expectantly with questioning looks.

“Sorry, civilian got on with me,” she whispered, reaching her fellow detectives with long strides, “any activity inside the condo?”

Korsak shook his head, motioning the two other detectives near the wall in case of unexpected gunfire. It was just a precaution but a necessary one given that the suspect was a serial with a high probability of a victim inside. Like a squirrel, Yuri’s potential future actions were unknown to the detectives upon his apprehension. He could go quietly or try to perform some kind of desperation move but Jane hoped for the former. Nodding to Korsak, she grabbed her gun from its holster, awaiting the unknown expectantly.

Korsak knocked on the door and it was opened by their prime suspect in the flesh, Yuri Grigorvich, looking completely at ease with the situation. His red eyebrows were raised slightly at the unusualness of seeing Detective Korsak at his door, but everything else about his elegant style was the same as their first meeting. Dressed in a plain black leotard, pointe shoes, and a hastily thrown on pair of sweatpants, Yuri seemed more like a dutiful dancer than a deranged serial killer, but Jane kept her guard up.

Korsak introduced himself, allowing Jane to peer behind the door-frame to determine if a body was present. Jane signaled with her hands that there was nothing of notice within the condo from her point of view and Frost issued the same signal from his side of the door-frame, as well.

“So,” Yuri said, stopping briefly as if testing the air like a cat before continuing. “Why are you here, Detective Korsak…and company? You can come out now, Ms. Rizzoli and Mr. Frost. I’d have to be dead not to notice the two of you signaling to each other like we’re in some kind of action film.”

Frost and Jane got up from their hiding positions, joining Korsak. “You’re a suspect in the murders of Alina Bobrova, Irina Dotsenkaya, and Natalia Gerasimova. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

Yuri’s eyebrows lowered, a brief flash of boiling fury breaking through the mask of civility, but as quick as it arrived, it disappeared as his control took back over. His darkened focus moved from Korsak to Jane with the blink of an eye, another challenge subconsciously set by the dancer to the detective. Her body tensed, wanting nothing more than to throw his challenge back in his face.

An exhausted sigh came from the man’s lips, lifting his hands in surrender. “There is no need to look so abrasive, detectives. I’m hardly going to run away like some convicted felon since I have done nothing wrong. Isn’t that how the court system in America works, innocent until proven guilty? You have yet to prove my guilt, detectives. Even my youngest dancers know that they have to complete the most basic plié before moving into the grand plié; it is a natural progression that must be followed. But, who knows, maybe you do understand progression and have evidence that proves the guilt you all seem so ready to assume as truth. I highly doubt that, though. Americans are always so utterly backwards with the most basic of concepts.”

“Korsak?” Jane asked, frustration seeping from her tensed frame.

“Yes, Detective?”

“Read him his rights and take him to the car,” she said with an obvious eye-roll, grabbing onto Yuri’s strong shoulder to move him forward. “I’m tired of hearing this guy’s voice. If he keeps talking, I don’t know what I’ll do but I’m pretty sure it’s going to involve my hands and his face.”

Frost smiled before helping Korsak cuff Yuri to take him downstairs. Grabbing the radio at her hip in order to call Cavanaugh, Jane began to follow the detectives out after closing his door. “We got him. He’s going willingly besides running his mouth. There’s no body in his condo from what I can tell but without a search warrant, I can’t go any further unless he allows us entrance and I highly doubt that is going to happen. We’re going to have to sweat him in the box, if we want to get anywhere with this guy.”

Jane shuddered at the possibility of being in a confined space with Yuri Grigorvich. Shaking her head, the brunette motioned to the stairs. “You guys can head down. I want to take the stairs. I think if I’m within arm’s length of this guy, I might do something I’ll regret.”


	10. Chapter 10

Nearly an hour of watching Yuri Grigorvich gaze at the three detectives with a meditative air had passed before Jane had made the executive decision to do rotations instead of their current plan of having all three of them in there with him. Using hour-long blocks, she was sure that they could break him into giving up a confession.

As she opened the door to the interrogation room, Jane knew she had to find something to use that would get that mistake to present itself. The silent man had shown her the kinks in his armor several times already, now it was all about taking advantage of those weaknesses.

Yuri’s eyes remained closed, her entrance gaining nothing but a slightly noticeable flutter of his red eyebrows. All remained still as Jane stood motionless, scrutinizing the flexible man as he continued to sit cross-legged in the chair, his limbs tapping out a rhythm only known by him.

Moving over to the control for the air-conditioning in the interrogation room, Jane turned the air off, clanging filling the space briefly as the ventilation reluctantly shut down. Heat immediately began to settle into the room as the cool air gradually began to seep away. It had been awhile since she had used this technique during an interrogation but she had to use anything to get an advantage with this guy. If that meant literally sweating the confession out of him, then so be it. Yuri opened his eyes at the sudden loss of the blasting air-conditioning, pupils dilating in response to Jane’s actions.

Walking over to the chair opposite the man, Jane sat down and casually relaxed her arms and legs. “Sorry about that. My boss hates when we waste energy. He claims it’s because of the money, budget-cuts and all that.”

His answering silence was complete, showing no signs of lifting. Jane ignored the complete silence, continuing onward. “But I’m sure you don’t know anything about that, do you? I mean, come on, an artistic director has money coming out of his ass with all of the dignitaries that give you donations and what not. I bet you can afford to run the air-conditioning in those studios all day if you wanted, huh?”

For the first time since they started interrogating him, Yuri’s eyes opened, revealing navy-blue irises that looked curiously at the brunette detective. “Yes, I guess so. Money is not my problem. My job is to lead, not to ponder the miniscule details of the company.”

“I understand,” she said with a knowing nod, struggling to keep up the friendly charade, earnestly looking for an opening she could exploit. “How did you get to be an artistic director, anyway? Someone with your obvious talent should be dancing on the stage, not directing others.”

Yuri’s eyes subconsciously drifted to the side for a fraction of a second before returning his focus back to Jane. “I don’t know why it would interest you, but I moved from Russia in my late-twenties to work as a choreographer for a small dancing company in the States. They were badly in need of some quality instruction and I needed to get away. I kept moving around to different companies for a couple of years until I ended up in Boston.”

“Couldn’t find the shoe that fit, could you?”

Eyebrows furrowing in confusion, Yuri looked away. “I’m not very good with your American idioms, but yes, I guess I couldn’t find the shoe that fit for my skills. Far too many American dancers are used to being coddled, unduly praised, and loved for the smallest glimmer of talent. It’s sickening given that most of them lack the discipline to properly manifest that talent into skill.”

“And that’s the only reason why you constantly floating from company to company?” Jane released a hearty laugh, causing the crimson haired gentleman to flinch in shock. “I didn’t know you were so trivial. You sure you didn’t leave because you’d broken too many hearts?”

For a second time, his eyes twitched uncomfortably away from Jane. “I am hardly what you would call a playboy, Ms. Rizzoli. My life revolves around my dancers and providing them with the best environment to showcase their skills. When would I have the time to obsess over a woman, in the middle of the night, staring into her window from my balcony? Is this not what Americans call ‘creeping’?”

“Come on…I’m sure some dancers have been able to maintain relationships while still retaining their level of skill. What about Alina?” Jane asked, taking out a folder and placing a picture of the first victim’s face on the table. “You said she was a bit of a party-girl but still managed to be a great dancer, regardless.”

“I never said it was impossible,” Yuri’s mask slowly beginning to fall away as his words got progressively more emotional. “Many of dancers can compartmentalize their personal life from their dancing and lead productive relationships but it is extremely difficult. The strain it creates on a ballerina’s ability to properly enthuse the emotional ranges of a character can lead to lackluster performances, resulting in expulsion from the company. No dancer who respects their craft would ever sully it by involving themselves with another person. It’s incredibly rude to the tradition of ballet, the audience, and the company to not give everything in the portrayal of a character. It is the ultimate impropriety.”

Jane raised her eyebrows as Yuri drove his hand through his hair in anxiety. She had clearly struck a nerve and decided to use it as her opening into the withdrawn man before he clammed up again. “Sounds like you have first-hand experience.”

His eyes closed in memory, a single line of sweat marring his perfect ice-cold features. “My sister…died because of a stupid infatuation with a woman who didn’t even love her enough to come to her funeral so, yes, I have firsthand experience.”

The brunette’s body tensed in response to this unexpected fact. She had expected nothing more than witty repartee to make her lose focus but certainly not this. Moving her chair closer to the table, Jane leaned slightly forward to show that he had her attention. “I’m sorry for your loss. How did she die?”

“She didn’t die yesterday, detective, so there’s no reason to waste your pity on a man who has since moved on.” He said dismissively, ignoring her slight frown at his rudeness. “Officially, Matryona died of cardiac arrest, but I know it was because of a broken heart. She couldn’t dance with her love and gave up on life like a weakling. That damn Ekaterina… She came and took my dearest sister’s heart and blinded her so she knew nothing else but her devilish influence. Love is nothing but another instrument of evil to a ballet dancer. It detracts from the brilliance of the artist, makes them susceptible to whims that are unbecoming of an elite dancer.”

Ignoring her impulses to wait, Jane leaned in even further, hoping to scare the now talkative man to confess. “Is that why you killed Alina, Irina, and Natalia, Yuri? They fell in love with something other than the stage and it killed you to see them turning into your sister, making the same mistake. Those women you killed, they represent your sister. That’s why you dyed their hair red, ripped out their hearts, and blinded them. So they wouldn’t turn into your sister, to protect them.”

Despite his earlier anxiety, Yuri’s face closed itself off from Jane, his eyes becoming dark with self-contained fury. He was angry but he was directing that anger internally instead of externally which meant Jane was stuck with nothing to exploit further. _Damn it,_ _I pushed him way too soon._

Jane struggled to retain control as he leaned forward toward the detective with the same piercing eyes that she had seen upon their first meeting together at the Opera House. They captured her attention, made it incredibly hard to focus, and mesmerized the detective like no other suspect or perpetrator had before. Liquid fear pumped into her immobile frame as each second passed with his stare locked on to her rapidly weakening one. Unlike before, there was nothing here for him to focus his gaze on but the detective. Jane knew that someone as manipulative as him understood this critical fact. _I can’t escape…_

“Detective,” Yuri whispered, their eyes continuing to duel for power, “I thought you were different than the old man who has had far too many rich sugars in his diet and the black man who’s far too overzealous in proving his worth. You were the only one who bothered talking to me like I am a human and not a suspect you have no grounds to retain in your custody. I guess it was far too much to expect you to be different from all of those others. I’ll hand it to you, Ms. Detective Jane Rizzoli, you are fantastically better looking than most women I deal with on a daily basis, but you’re just as stupid. I refuse to talk to people like you because I find your stupidity to be contagious. Please…leave me alone, detective.”

In response to his efforts to take control from her, Jane growled, attempting to release herself from his gaze. Frustration took the place of fear. With a surprising amount of speed, the angered brunette reacted to the Yuri’s hold on her by lifting her hands from underneath the table, grabbing the collar of the black leotard, nearly ripping it with her level of intensity. The world around her lost focus as his pupils dilated in response to Jane’s rebuttal of his attempt to take away control. Her thoughts were nothing but flashes of words and colors, nothing more important than finally teaching Yuri Grigorvich that she was the boss.

“You’re such a child, Jane,” he groaned, sweat running down his brow as he continued to assert his authority over the detective.

“And you’re a serial killer, Yuri,” Jane growled in response, tightening her hold on the lithe dancer’s leotard, wishing she could just move the table between them for just one second. “Now that we have that out of the way, I’d really appreciate it if you just confessed.”

His piercing blue eyes darted away from Jane’s eyes in submission, with a powerful shove, the detective pushed him back to his seat. “You have no evidence. Keep hounding me all night, if you have the time, but, in all honesty, shouldn’t you be spending your time looking for the real murderer of my dancers? When the serial killer strikes again, you’ll be kicking yourself for not focusing your attentions elsewhere.”

Jane got up, grabbed the strewn about photos, and walked confidently toward the door of the interrogation room. “Maybe, but I like to live in the present, Mr. Grigorvich. And, right now, at this exact moment, I’d like to kick _you_ in the face, several times. But, I’m not going to do that. You know why? Because I’m going to find the evidence I need that’s going to put you away for a long time. When you get twenty-five years for each victim, you’ll wish I had kicked your ass and I’ll be smiling.”

Closing the door resoundingly behind her, Jane left Yuri in the same position upon her arrival, mute and alone.

\---

Frost and Korsak saw Jane’s exit from the interrogation room and quickly made themselves scarce; Frost presumably needed to get ready for his shift in interrogation and Korsak made some lame half-assed excuse concerning getting coffee, even though his cup was clearly still full. Normally, she would have been annoyed at their obvious avoidance of her, but Jane was glad that they had picked up on her mood tonight. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about the case and she really didn’t want to talk about her physical approach in handling Yuri Grigorvich either. She needed a distraction, something to take her focus away from everything involving this case. Just as she managed to reach her desk, sitting down exhaustively, her phone began vibrating a millisecond before the sound of Chopin’s “Funeral March” reached her ears.

“Rizzoli,” the tired brunette huffed out, dropping her heavy head to her desk, garnering a loud bang from her cluttered desk.

“Jane…um, could you come down to my office for a minute? It’s kinda important, unless you’re busy then-”

Jane lifted her head reluctantly, pushing her curls out of her face. “Why?”

“Um…uhh,” she rolled her eyes as Maura’s efforts to lie were plainly obvious, even over the crackling interference of the cell-phone line. “I…think I saw a rat in the autopsy room. It was…uh…really big and scary. Could you come by and look for it? No one else is here, I don’t know who else to call, and I don’t like rats. Please, Jeddy?”

Jane sighed, getting up with the same urgency as an old man. “Fine, but I’m only doing this because I love you. If I get down there and there’s no rat, Maura, there’s going to be a problem, a _big_ problem.”

“Ohh…uh, yeah…it’s uh…something alright. Love you too.”

The blonde hung up quickly, leaving Jane with a confused look on her face.

“Wait…what?” Jane exclaimed passionately to the elevator, groaning in frustration, not noticing the concerned look on the patrol officer’s face next to her going on the up elevator. “Fuck me…I don’t know what this woman is planning, but I have a feeling it involves me watching her recite the periodic table by atomic mass, discovery date, and alphabetical order, just because she can. Why did I have to fall in love with a woman who’s probably a member of Mensa? I swear… If there’s no rat down there, I’m going to take your shoes and hide them in the evidence lockers.”

***

There was no rat in the autopsy room, but Jane had no inclination to shoot something upon seeing the scene Maura had set up for the two of them in her office. The seats near her desk and the couch had been pushed near the wall; a large tartan green blanket had been set out in the remaining open space; lighted candles had been placed around the room strategically to provide both light and atmosphere; and, most importantly, the techies were sent home early. They were alone without the worry of being killed for the first time since the week started. Jane couldn’t believe the amount of effort that had been put into this one special moment for the two of them, pride for her girlfriend welled up inside as tears came to the brunette’s eyes.

As Jane stood in awe of the rearranged office space, Maura closed the door behind them, looking expectantly at her girlfriend’s face. “Well, what do you think? I know it’s not a rat but it was the only way I could get you down here without ruining the surprise.”

Maura walked around Jane’s still figure nervously, grabbing a small picnic basket from behind the desk and a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. “Frost came down to tell me you caught the serial when you returned to BPD. I knew that your plans to take me to dinner tonight were going to forgotten, again, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and plan this little attempt at a picnic for the two of us. I asked Angela to make some food for us and she said no problem. And, don’t worry, honey, I told her that it was because we hadn’t eaten all day. I put it all together without her knowledge. The wine, I got from my own personal stash. It’s a 1996 Barolo, a nice red that works perfectly for the pasta your mom made. So…do you like?”

Jane smiled, unable to respond and put her happiness into words. All of the various emotions from the last couple of days threatened to overwhelm her battered defenses and, oddly enough, she had no will in her to keep it restrained. Normally, she would have perceived crying as a weakness to hide away in a corner of her mind but not now.

“It’s okay,” Maura whispered as a muffled groan rose up from the general direction of her girlfriend’s mouth. “It’s just you and me. No one is going to judge you here. Take all the time you need.”

Minutes passed endlessly, the two women giving each other comfort. Finally, the tears dried up, leaving Jane feeling utterly spent, hungry for the first time in days, and at ease. Her head lifted from Maura’s neck and she looked around her in confusion. “I’m sorry for…all of that. It’s just been-”

Maura lifted her finger up to silence the brunette after wiping the remaining tears away. “Stop, just stop. I don’t know why it is so hard for you to get through the big stubborn cranium of yours that I want you to feel comfortable enough to be whoever you need to be around me. The only way we’re going to grow as a couple is to be open with each other about everything, the good and the bad.”

“I know,” Jane muttered, lost in the subtle green tones of her girlfriend’s eyes. “But, it’s hard to just…open myself up overnight. Even when I was a kid, I always kept things to myself. Being the only girl and the eldest tends to do that to you.”

“Don’t you dare use that as an excuse, Jane. You think I wasn’t alone? I was adopted, an only child, and had to raise myself because my parents were so wrapped up in each other to notice that I existed in any other capacity besides being included in their Christmas card photos, year after year.” Maura said earnestly. “Honey, I could care less why you and me are the way we are. I just need to know if you can be the woman I know that you already have within you. The woman that holds me tight when we’re alone at night, makes me laugh with her dead-on impressions, takes me higher than any man I’ve ever been with, and always watches “Planet Earth” with me when it’s on marathon. That’s the woman I want, Jane. I love it when you’re all serious and masculine in public, but there’s no need to be that way with your lover all the time. I need you to feel comfortable enough with me to let me lead sometimes, and that means opening up to me, letting me know what’s bothering you.”

Jane nodded, genuinely agreeing with her girlfriend’s plea. Maura didn’t want her to change or be something drastically different, just with different priorities placed on certain aspects of her personality when they were alone. _I can do that._ “Okay, I’ll try to be more girly when I’m with you and let you take care of me sometimes. But if that means I have to wear dresses and start giggling with you about the differences between banana and canary yellow, we’re going to have to talk.”

“No, you don’t have to wear dresses, Jeddy. Your suits, baggy tees, and jeans are a part of your identity. It would be unfair of me to take that away from you,” she smiled, a blush tinting her cheeks. “And you know how much I love stripping your suits off of you. Each time I rip your collared shirt from your body and see those lacy frills of the various bras we’ve bought together…it’s so exhilarating and euphoric. It makes up for all of the bad Christmases I’ve had.”

Jane rolled her eyes, moving toward the wine and picnic basket on the desk. “So, let me get this straight. You get off on ripping my clothes off…huh, and I thought I was butch.”

“Shut-up,” Maura said with mock annoyance, taking her heels off, placing them near the door. “Besides, being butch and femme are just stereotypes portrayed to the heterosexual community in order to better assimilate lesbians into an image that is easily understood by the intelligentsia to better frame those who are different as ‘normal’, aka those that identify as heterosexual. Did you know, according to a survey published in a sociological journal that most women range in between the extremes with their sexuality, like how most Republicans aren’t all far right and Democrats aren’t all far left? It was a very interesting read if you want me to email you a copy? But you won’t read it, so why bother?”

Jane allowed the medical examiner to ramble on as her interest floated toward the basket of food and wine. Placing the items in her hands, Jane set them on the blanket covered floor before grabbing some wine-glasses from inside one of Maura’s cupboards. “This is really nice. I really appreciate it, Maura. Really, I do.”

“Thanks, we never spend any time together so I figured this was the only way to do it,” she smiled, sitting down next to the basket, taking the plates and food out while arranging them out in the space in front of her. “May I ask you a question, Jane?”

The detective sat down in front of Maura, opening the bottle of wine, pouring the fragrant red liquid into each glass. “Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking about us, lately. We hardly ever see each other and I really don’t want an incident like what almost happened earlier today to happen again. It’s not good for a professional working environment.”

Jane’s brown eyebrows rose in response, lifting the glass up to her nose before swirling it slightly to help it breathe like Maura taught her. “And your point is?”

Maura gathered a brief breath as Jane took a casual sip of the robust red wine. “I think we should move into together. I mean, you already spend all your time either here or at my place and your clothes are already starting to accumulate their own area in my closet. You have a drawer, Jane. I don’t give a drawer to just anybody. Jo Friday loves the backyard and the pet tortoise I gave you is going to need a proper habitat to promote healthy growth in the future-”

“Honey, I love you, dearly but you’re rambling. Moving in with you is a big step for us. It represents a lot of commitment from the both of us. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have you available to cuddle with every night but…you need to give me more than just a second to make a decision that’s based on common sense and not emotional impulse. I’m not running away like I used too, I just need some time.” Jane said authoritatively, her hand extending to comfort her girlfriend. “Let’s just eat, enjoy the moment, and get this case solved and then we can start talking about renting a U-Haul. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

Maura nodded as Jane began to pick excitedly at her mother’s pasta. Her mind savored the food but she couldn’t help feeling the beginning of unease rising again at the idea of moving in with her girlfriend. The blonde reached her hand out to hold Jane’s hand lightly and, as suddenly as it arrived, the feeling of unease dissipated, replaced with an awe-inspiring sense of love. With issues resolved, Jane relaxed and gave in to the happiness of being with the woman she loved and loved her equally in return. Yuri could wait for a while.


	11. Chapter 11

Frost and Korsak saw Jane’s exit from the interrogation room and quickly made themselves scarce; Frost presumably needed to get ready for his shift in interrogation and Korsak made some lame half-assed excuse concerning getting coffee, even though his cup was clearly still full. Normally, she would have been annoyed at their obvious avoidance of her, but Jane was glad that they had picked up on her mood tonight. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about the case and she really didn’t want to talk about her physical approach in handling Yuri Grigorvich either. She needed a distraction, something to take her focus away from everything involving this case. Just as she managed to reach her desk, sitting down exhaustively, her phone began vibrating a millisecond before the sound of Chopin’s “Funeral March” reached her ears.

“Rizzoli,” the tired brunette huffed out, dropping her heavy head to her desk, garnering a loud bang from her cluttered desk.

“Jane…um, could you come down to my office for a minute? It’s kinda important, unless you’re busy then-”

Jane lifted her head reluctantly, pushing her curls out of her face. “Why?”

“Um…uhh,” she rolled her eyes as Maura’s efforts to lie were plainly obvious, even over the crackling interference of the cell-phone line. “I…think I saw a rat in the autopsy room. It was…uh…really big and scary. Could you come by and look for it? No one else is here, I don’t know who else to call, and I don’t like rats. Please, Jeddy?”

Jane sighed, getting up with the same urgency as an old man. “Fine, but I’m only doing this because I love you. If I get down there and there’s no rat, Maura, there’s going to be a problem, a _big_ problem.”

“Ohh…uh, yeah…it’s uh…something alright. Love you too.”

The blonde hung up quickly, leaving Jane with a confused look on her face.

“Wait…what?” Jane exclaimed passionately to the elevator, groaning in frustration, not noticing the concerned look on the patrol officer’s face next to her going on the up elevator. “Fuck me…I don’t know what this woman is planning, but I have a feeling it involves me watching her recite the periodic table by atomic mass, discovery date, and alphabetical order, just because she can. Why did I have to fall in love with a woman who’s probably a member of Mensa? I swear… If there’s no rat down there, I’m going to take your shoes and hide them in the evidence lockers.”

***

There was no rat in the autopsy room, but Jane had no inclination to shoot something upon seeing the scene Maura had set up for the two of them in her office. The seats near her desk and the couch had been pushed near the wall; a large tartan green blanket had been set out in the remaining open space; lighted candles had been placed around the room strategically to provide both light and atmosphere; and, most importantly, the techies were sent home early. They were alone without the worry of being killed for the first time since the week started. Jane couldn’t believe the amount of effort that had been put into this one special moment for the two of them, pride for her girlfriend welled up inside as tears came to the brunette’s eyes.

As Jane stood in awe of the rearranged office space, Maura closed the door behind them, looking expectantly at her girlfriend’s face. “Well, what do you think? I know it’s not a rat but it was the only way I could get you down here without ruining the surprise.”

Maura walked around Jane’s still figure nervously, grabbing a small picnic basket from behind the desk and a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. “Frost came down to tell me you caught the serial when you returned to BPD. I knew that your plans to take me to dinner tonight were going to forgotten, again, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and plan this little attempt at a picnic for the two of us. I asked Angela to make some food for us and she said no problem. And, don’t worry, honey, I told her that it was because we hadn’t eaten all day. I put it all together without her knowledge. The wine, I got from my own personal stash. It’s a 1996 Barolo, a nice red that works perfectly for the pasta your mom made. So…do you like?”

Jane smiled, unable to respond and put her happiness into words. All of the various emotions from the last couple of days threatened to overwhelm her battered defenses and, oddly enough, she had no will in her to keep it restrained. Normally, she would have perceived crying as a weakness to hide away in a corner of her mind but not now.

“It’s okay,” Maura whispered as a muffled groan rose up from the general direction of her girlfriend’s mouth. “It’s just you and me. No one is going to judge you here. Take all the time you need.”

Minutes passed endlessly, the two women giving each other comfort. Finally, the tears dried up, leaving Jane feeling utterly spent, hungry for the first time in days, and at ease. Her head lifted from Maura’s neck and she looked around her in confusion. “I’m sorry for…all of that. It’s just been-”

Maura lifted her finger up to silence the brunette after wiping the remaining tears away. “Stop, just stop. I don’t know why it is so hard for you to get through the big stubborn cranium of yours that I want you to feel comfortable enough to be whoever you need to be around me. The only way we’re going to grow as a couple is to be open with each other about everything, the good and the bad.”

“I know,” Jane muttered, lost in the subtle green tones of her girlfriend’s eyes. “But, it’s hard to just…open myself up overnight. Even when I was a kid, I always kept things to myself. Being the only girl and the eldest tends to do that to you.”

“Don’t you dare use that as an excuse, Jane. You think I wasn’t alone? I was adopted, an only child, and had to raise myself because my parents were so wrapped up in each other to notice that I existed in any other capacity besides being included in their Christmas card photos, year after year.” Maura said earnestly. “Honey, I could care less why you and me are the way we are. I just need to know if you can be the woman I know that you already have within you. The woman that holds me tight when we’re alone at night, makes me laugh with her dead-on impressions, takes me higher than any man I’ve ever been with, and always watches “Planet Earth” with me when it’s on marathon. That’s the woman I want, Jane. I love it when you’re all serious and masculine in public, but there’s no need to be that way with your lover all the time. I need you to feel comfortable enough with me to let me lead sometimes, and that means opening up to me, letting me know what’s bothering you.”

Jane nodded, genuinely agreeing with her girlfriend’s plea. Maura didn’t want her to change or be something drastically different, just with different priorities placed on certain aspects of her personality when they were alone. _I can do that._ “Okay, I’ll try to be more girly when I’m with you and let you take care of me sometimes. But if that means I have to wear dresses and start giggling with you about the differences between banana and canary yellow, we’re going to have to talk.”

“No, you don’t have to wear dresses, Jeddy. Your suits, baggy tees, and jeans are a part of your identity. It would be unfair of me to take that away from you,” she smiled, a blush tinting her cheeks. “And you know how much I love stripping your suits off of you. Each time I rip your collared shirt from your body and see those lacy frills of the various bras we’ve bought together…it’s so exhilarating and euphoric. It makes up for all of the bad Christmases I’ve had.”

Jane rolled her eyes, moving toward the wine and picnic basket on the desk. “So, let me get this straight. You get off on ripping my clothes off…huh, and I thought I was butch.”

“Shut-up,” Maura said with mock annoyance, taking her heels off, placing them near the door. “Besides, being butch and femme are just stereotypes portrayed to the heterosexual community in order to better assimilate lesbians into an image that is easily understood by the intelligentsia to better frame those who are different as ‘normal’, aka those that identify as heterosexual. Did you know, according to a survey published in a sociological journal that most women range in between the extremes with their sexuality, like how most Republicans aren’t all far right and Democrats aren’t all far left? It was a very interesting read if you want me to email you a copy? But you won’t read it, so why bother?”

Jane allowed the medical examiner to ramble on as her interest floated toward the basket of food and wine. Placing the items in her hands, Jane set them on the blanket covered floor before grabbing some wine-glasses from inside one of Maura’s cupboards. “This is really nice. I really appreciate it, Maura. Really, I do.”

“Thanks, we never spend any time together so I figured this was the only way to do it,” she smiled, sitting down next to the basket, taking the plates and food out while arranging them out in the space in front of her. “May I ask you a question, Jane?”

The detective sat down in front of Maura, opening the bottle of wine, pouring the fragrant red liquid into each glass. “Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking about us, lately. We hardly ever see each other and I really don’t want an incident like what almost happened earlier today to happen again. It’s not good for a professional working environment.”

Jane’s brown eyebrows rose in response, lifting the glass up to her nose before swirling it slightly to help it breathe like Maura taught her. “And your point is?”

Maura gathered a brief breath as Jane took a casual sip of the robust red wine. “I think we should move into together. I mean, you already spend all your time either here or at my place and your clothes are already starting to accumulate their own area in my closet. You have a drawer, Jane. I don’t give a drawer to just anybody. Jo Friday loves the backyard and the pet tortoise I gave you is going to need a proper habitat to promote healthy growth in the future-”

“Honey, I love you, dearly but you’re rambling. Moving in with you is a big step for us. It represents a lot of commitment from the both of us. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have you available to cuddle with every night but…you need to give me more than just a second to make a decision that’s based on common sense and not emotional impulse. I’m not running away like I used too, I just need some time.” Jane said authoritatively, her hand extending to comfort her girlfriend. “Let’s just eat, enjoy the moment, and get this case solved and then we can start talking about renting a U-Haul. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

Maura nodded as Jane began to pick excitedly at her mother’s pasta. Her mind savored the food but she couldn’t help feeling the beginning of unease rising again at the idea of moving in with her girlfriend. The blonde reached her hand out to hold Jane’s hand lightly and, as suddenly as it arrived, the feeling of unease dissipated, replaced with an awe-inspiring sense of love. With issues resolved, Jane relaxed and gave in to the happiness of being with the woman she loved and loved her equally in return. Yuri could wait for a while.

\---

Their romantic candlelit dinner finished, Jane returned back to the homicide unit, refreshed and motivated to continue onward with getting a confession from Yuri. Despite their lack of evidence, she knew there had to be something that they could use against him but Jane was at a loss to what that may be. The bodies were clean, the crimes scenes were spotless with the lack of DNA, and they couldn’t look in his condo until they had probable cause to his involvement in the murders. But, they couldn’t prove involvement until the techies were allowed to get in the condo.

Jane’s computer binged for her attention as she tried to maintain appearing to be busier than she actually was. Korsak had just started his rounds with Yuri in the interrogation room as Frost ran up to the brunette’s desk with Frankie Rizzoli, Jane’s brother, in tow. Their excitement was sickening to watch, even though she was immensely curious to know what all of the fuss was about.

“What’s up, fellas?” Jane asked tiredly, sarcasm dripping from her words. “Let me guess, you two have successfully created a joint-custody program for the doll?”

“Action figure,” Frost and Frankie shouted at the same time before their eyes narrowed at each other. Frankie, ignoring Frost, returned his focus back to his sister. “Actually, we found a body.”

Jane’s eyebrows rose, her hand running through her tangled mass of loose curls. “There are a lot of bodies in Boston, Frankie, being just a little bit more specific will go a long way.”

“We found another body, a dancer, in your suspect’s condo. CSU has yet to do any specific testing but the assistant coroner says that the victim’s injuries match up to Maura’s notes on the other three. But, more importantly, the woman is alive, Jane. When we found her, she was disoriented and bruised, but in much better shape than the other victims.” Frankie said eagerly, turning to Frost.

“We’ve had her in our custody for the last hour and she’s talking, about everything.” The young detective stated. He grabbed his notepad from his pocket, beginning to read from the lined pages. “Ekaterina Kursinka claims that she was asked by the suspect to have lunch at his condo in order to discuss the final details for the company’s upcoming production of ‘Don Quixote.’ Instead, he tied her to the bed and kept mumbling about someone named Matryona.”

“Was she drunk like the others?”

Frost shook his head. “Surprisingly, no. She registered a 0.04, hardly enough for him to take advantage of her physically or mentally.”

“Did you get anything else?”

“When we asked her about if she had any knowledge of who Matryona was, she became over-emotional. I had to stop the interview, it was so bad. After she calmed down, Ekaterina told us that she had been in an intimate relationship with the woman nearly ten years ago.”

Jane was already up and out of her seat, walking toward the interrogation room. “So how did we not notice her when we were at his condo earlier? Is this woman sure she saw Yuri doing all of this?”

Frost nodded his thanks to Frankie before he left, leaving the detective to go racing behind his partner. “The loft has partitions that separate sections of the space when needed. His bedroom is situated away from the door, obscured. But she was also unconscious so she couldn’t call out to us and yes, she is positive about Yuri’s role in all of this.”

“Please tell me this was a legal search.” Jane said, looking back at Frost with bright eyes. “Or did you just ‘happen’ to be walking by and ‘heard’ what you perceived to be a gunshot?”

“Legal, one-hundred percent,” Frost replied. “The Loo called in some favors with a judge. Apparently, the judge was going to say no to Cavanaugh but once he mentioned your name, he lightened up and immediately agreed to sign the warrant. I think someone has an admirer…”

Jane knocked on the door leading to interrogation, announcing her presence to Korsak. “The last thing I need in my life is an inappropriate relationship with a man who has a law degree.”

“I don’t think Maura would appreciate it either,” Frost mused.

Jane’s mouth went agog. “What…did you just say?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said playfully, a smile crossing his lips. “It’s obvious that you and Maura have gotten closer in the past couple of months. Everyone knows that new relationships can make friendships strained. Besides, you two have become allergic to men. And even if you weren’t avoiding men like the plague, I don’t know how many men would be happy about their girlfriend having a _candlelit dinner_ with a beautiful woman like Maura.”

Jane’s face shifted from shock to nonchalance as her arms crossed across her chest. “Do you have something you want to say, detective?”

“Yeah, I do,” he whispered, challenging his partner. Tension developed between the two detectives as they squared off, but, as quick as the moment had arisen, it evaporated into pure joy.

Frost’s face broke into a beaming smile. “I knew something was up when I saw the two of you all cuddled up in her office earlier after I finished my shift with Captain Silence. I’m so happy for the two of you. You’re good for each other. Since you two are together…do you think you could maybe convince her to let me drive her Aston? Hell, I’ll even go for just sitting in it.”

A blush colored her cheeks as Korsak came out of interrogation, annoyance clearly evident on the older man’s face. “Please save me from this difficult man. He makes me feel like I’m inconveniencing him or something.”

“We got him, Korsak. This guy is as guilty as sin for at least attempted murder. I’ll take something over nothing. Frost will catch you up to speed while I collar this guy, once and for all.” Jane walked past the detective, entering the interrogation room with handcuffs in hand.

Yuri opened his eyes, holding Jane’s gaze with obvious submission.

“Came back for more, Ms. Rizzoli?” Yuri asked, lowering his gaze toward the water filled plastic cup on the table.

“Get up,” she barked, crossing the distance that separated the two of them, grabbing his arm to force the motionless man out of the seat. “Ekaterina Kursinska. You know her, right? Of course you do, she was found in your condo. The woman was unconscious, bruised, and dehydrated but alive. Looks like you didn’t have a chance to finish before you were caught.”

Yuri’s hands played in his pants pockets with barely noticeable movement, the detective focused on nothing else but collaring the man for the murder of three women and an attempted murder of another.

“Hardly, Ms. Rizzoli. Ekaterina…I wanted to make her my _coda_ but I couldn’t do it. Her eyes were like Matryona’s for that brief second before I could kill her. In that moment, I saw it, the reason why my sister could manage to get her heart broken by a woman. Kindred spirits…soul-mates, whatever you Americans call it, it is idiotic of me to ignore the connection my sister had with that woman. Despite my earlier plans, I couldn’t take her life, leaving the performance unfinished. For the first time since she had died, I felt a true connection to my sister. I will forever cherish those few moments. But,” he muttered to himself, eyes blinded, all former intensity lost, “all of the things I did to achieve one last farewell performance to my sister shall not go to waste. Dear sister, you and I made such a beautiful Odette and Siegfried, but it is time…time for us to ascend to our true happiness together in Paradise.”

Pushing away from the brunette detective with a surprising amount of force, Yuri pulled a syringe filled with a toxic brew of purple fluid as his eyes became wild with excitement. In slow motion, Jane struggled to get up from the cold cement floor and process what she should have seen coming.

“To our eternal _pas de deux_ , Matryona,” he exclaimed bewilderedly as the syringe of atropine was thrust into his neck, each milligram of the liquid flooding his veins. His lithe body fell quickly, eyes rolling upward before being shuttered for the last time.

Quickly standing up, Jane rushed toward the emergency red button, quickly pushing it before running back to Yuri’s now prone, vacant frame. “Damn it, you can’t die yet.”

But it was far too late and Jane knew it. Endless buzzing echoed both inside and outside the small room as the emergency alert continued to ring. Paramedics charged into the space, pushing Jane back and out of the room, leaving her alone and frustrated.


	12. Chapter 12

After the tumultuous couple of days that resulted because of Yuri Grigorvich’s death, everything had settled to the old comfortable rhythm. Jane’s celebrity status around Boston as a “hero” was reaffirmed to the public, despite her lack of involvement in bringing Yuri to justice. All she had done was watch him commit suicide, thus taking justice out of the equation. That hardly made her a hero.

Jane considered herself a bystander, in all honesty, but the Lieutenant had ignored her lack of pride and insisted, along with the mayor, that she be awarded the Medal of Valor. The ceremony that resulted was bogus and completely unnecessary, however, Maura had insisted on framing the damn thing. It nearly killed her to walk by the shining gold object each time she stayed over at her girlfriend’s place. In honor of her new efforts to be more open with her, Jane had told the blonde about the reasons for her dislike and, with respect to her feelings, Maura had moved the object to the study where Maura’s own numerous degrees and accolades were displayed. Despite knowing how much Maura supported her, it was still hard to be open about these sorts of concerns but, with time, Jane knew it would get easier.

At the moment, Jane and Maura were in her living room watching a marathon of “Planet Earth,” tolerated by the brunette because of the occasional imagery of baby animals. Buttered organic popcorn in a ceramic bowl balanced precariously on the arm of the couch, the two women entangled together in blissful silence, the television program providing the only light throughout the room. Maura’s head was in Jane’s lap, facing the television while Jane’s sat upright, munching the buttery bliss happily. For the first time since last week, they were absolutely, completely, and utterly alone with no serial killers to take away their attention from each other. Jane’s hands wrote out trails of patterns on the pieces of smooth marble skin that had presented itself while Maura played like a kitten with a loose thread on the brunette’s worn-in sweatpants.

Unexpectedly, a giggle of amusement rose from her girlfriend’s mouth as her hand reached behind her to grab some popcorn. “That tickles.”

“I know,” she smiled suggestively, “why do you think I’m doing it?”

Her eyes rolled in mock annoyance. “You know how much I love my television programs, Jane. Stop trying to make me lose focus.”

“I don’t know…I think it would be so much fun to make you lose focus,” Jane whispered, hands continuing their zealous pattern tracing. Warning the brunette with fierce eyes, Maura released a subtle groan of excitement as her girlfriend’s hands continued to move lower, lower, ever lower. Tingling radiated underneath the surface of both of the woman’s skin, the television program soon forgotten, need rising to importance in their lust-addled minds. _It’s been far too long…_

Maura grabbed Jane’s unused arm, bringing their bodies closer, blush stained lips nearly touching. “If you keep going then you better make sure you finish the job or I’ll finish it for you.”

“I won’t stop, unless you want me to, Maura,” she muttered, barely audible. Despite that they had been together for over three months but Jane still felt an obligation to ask permission, knowing she would never be refused.

The screen over the couple cut to black as a night sequence in the show covered the room in darkness. Jane’s heart raced as the loss in vision increased her sense of touch ten-fold. Nothing but the feel of Maura’s lips teasing hers kept the brunette’s focus on the warm, moving mass of darkness in her lap. “I’ve missed you so much, honey. I think we’re going to have to volunteer ourselves up to science because only you can make my serotonin levels so impressively high. You make me believe that it is possible to die from pleasure even though scientifically speaking, since pleasure is just a mental construct based off of hormonal responses, it is impossible for me to actually do so.”

“And only you can make me turned on with scientific terms.” Jane replied back in a faint whisper, connecting their lips in a long awaited union.

With that request, the need overwhelmed their attempts to remain civilized toward each other. The passionate kiss that set fire to their entwined bodies burned everything it touched, leaving nothing but ecstasy in its wake. After taking the lead, Maura’s hands clawed at the elastic keeping Jane’s sweatpants and camisole on her already sweaty skin. Jane took the same approach to the blonde’s own skimpy night clothes, receiving little interference on Maura’s part.

A small hiss came up from the general direction of the couch, bringing a smile of satisfaction to Jane’s lips. “I’ve never heard you make that sound before, must be doing something right.”

“Hmm?” Maura asked slowly, her mind preoccupied with bringing her body closer to her girlfriend’s eager hands. “What are you talking about?”

“You hissed at me.”

The blonde’s eyes narrowed as her hands came up to frame Jane’s face. “No…I didn’t hiss at you. Why would I hiss-”

Suddenly, Maura was interrupted by the same hissing sound coming from near the couch where the two women were entwined. The two women looked around bewilderingly in the dark just as “Planet Earth” switched to a bright desert scene, bringing some much needed light into the room, revealing the cause of the hissing sound. Bass’s gigantic tan shell was slowly moving toward the couch, his reptilian head outside of his shell while eagerly crawling forward to his owner. With a pleased smile, Maura reached out to pet her reptilian friend’s scaly head, causing Bass to nibble on her fingers.

“Aww…how is my little man? Did you miss Mommy Maura, Bass ‘cause I missed you. I bet you’re so scared because I didn’t leave the light on for you, aren’t you?” She cooed affectionately, ignoring Jane’s eye-roll in response. “I thought I told you to stay in your room and no wandering around the house for the rest of the night? You know how bad your little eyes are in the dark and you know how you get scared which makes you cry. Mommy Maura hates seeing Bass in pain.”

“Why do you talk to an animal with no ears, Maura? There’s no point. He’s not going to respond back. I’m so jealous of that turtle. He gets more love from you than I do.” Jane sighed, hoping for the tortoise to leave but the animal refused to budge. To her annoyance, the brunette began seeing the predicament from the tortoise’s point of view.

Maura turned back with a raised eyebrow before resuming her task of comforting Bass. “Jane, Bass is my baby and you’re my honey. My love for him is totally different from our love for each other, there’s no need to be jealous. If you respected him more, you would know that. Bass may not hear but he’s very in tuned to the environment, Jane. He knows me on an instinctual level and he could know you on the same level, if you let him.”

“The last thing I want is a reptile knowing me on an ‘instinctual level.’ What’s he going to do, walk me to the bathroom every time I have to go pee? If that’s the case, I’ll probably have to carry him because with his pace, I’d’ve peed on myself by the time we got to the bathroom.”  Jane moved from her position over Maura, staring unseeing at the television program that had now moved to animals of the various deserts of the world. “When I move in, I don’t want to see your little buddy walking around underfoot at all hours. He can stroll around in the day but not at night, it’s way too weird. Jo wouldn’t like it and god knows I wouldn’t like it either.”

“Wait…” she said, excitement obvious as Maura rose toward her girlfriend, “you’re going to move in? Really? You aren’t just being sarcastic?”

Jane returned Maura’s shocked expression with a raised eyebrow. “Well…you put my medal in your hallway, half of my clothes are over here, I’m always using your laundry room, and…I love being here, with you, unless, you took your offer off the table? I know I took a minute to think about it but with everything that happened in the last couple of days, I’ve been a little preoccupied. I can understand if you don’t want to live with me though. Living with a cop can be-”

An uncharacteristic squeal of excitement came from Maura’s mouth as she leaped upon the brunette, interrupting her girlfriend. “Of course I want you to move in, Jeddy! We should have a move-in party. My mom can plan it. She’d be so excited to welcome you into the Isles family.”

“Honey,” Jane groaned out as the feel of Maura’s naked flesh against hers made it incredibly difficult to focus, “how about we focus on the present because you’re making it really hard to think about anything except showing my love for you, right now, on this couch.”

“Why do you get to have all the fun?”

Smiling enthusiastically, Maura lightly pushed the brunette down on the couch and began to truly make Jane lose focus. Everything ceased to be of importance as the pleasure of submitting to the blonde took the place of the tension dealing with work and serial killers. For the first time, Jane felt not just love for her girlfriend but the confidence to be public with her love for Maura.

_I don’t know what our next step will be as a couple but I’m sure we’ll be able to handle it, together._


End file.
